Adding a line break to a UITextView

Question

I have a UITextView that takes an NSString with formatting stringWithUTF8String. It is getting its values from a database and I want the text in the database to be rendered with breaks within the text. I tried using \n to do this but it gets rendered as text. Doing this in my information page of the app as straight text worked but I think the reason its not working when taking it from the database is because of the formatting.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If you want to add newline in Xcode5 / Xcode6 storyboard Attribute-Inspector (AI), you do it this way:

1. Drag out a UITextView.
2. Double-click it to edit text, place cursor where you want the paragraph break.
3. Hit alt-Enter a couple of times to create a blank line & paragraph.

Or, CTRL + Return make a new line.

You can now see the effect into output / View-mode in storyboard.

Answer 2

Expanding tc's answer a bit: when you have newlines in the string, you probably want to convert them to \n (that is, @"\\n" in Cocoa) then save to the database and, on getting the string BACK from the database, you probably want to convert those back to newlines. So you'd use code something like this:

NSString *saveString = [myTextField.text stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString: @"\n" withString: @"\\n"];
// save it to the db
// ... later ...
NSString *dbString = // get the string from the db.
myTextField.text = [dbString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString: @"\\n" withString: @"\n"];

Answer 3

Simply the below:

{
textView.text = @"January: 7th,21st,\n February: 4th,18th,\n March: 4th,18th,\n April: 1st, 15th, 29th, \n May: 13th, 27th, \n June: 10th,24th, \n July: 8th, 22nd, \n August: 5th, 19th, \n September: 2nd, 16th, 30th, \n October: 14th, 28th, \n November: 11th, 25th";
        NSLog (@"Recycle Dates for Abbey Way");

}

will be out putted as below in your textView or whatever you choose

Output :

January: 7th, 21st,
February: 4th, 18th,
March: 4th, 18th etc etc

Answer 4

In Swift, just add "\n" between two strings

Example:

let firstString = "Hello"

let secondString = "Senorita"

textview.text = firstString + "\n" + "secondString"

Answer 5

I think, you should try using "\r".

I have tested it on Xcode 4.2.1, iOS 4.3

Edit: This also works in iOS 3.0 and iOS 5.1

Answer 6

A UITextView will take the newlines, but it will not work with cariage returns. You will have to make sure your input is correct.

I tried it in the IB editor, and had some troubles with it initially. Then I used a text editor, typed my text and then pasted it into the IB editor.

That did the trick, for me. Your source comes from a database, so I think probaly the newlines are actually newlines, but perhaphs carriage return's or other. Check the HEX string of your input.

Answer 7

Set the (UIKeyboardType)keyboardType and (UIReturnKeyTYpe) returnKeyType

if you are building in code.

If you are using IB then just go to the first inspector panel and set the TextInputTraits

Answer 8

when you get from db. try

NSString *content = [mytext stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"\\n" withString:@"\n"];
self.textView.text = content;

Answer 9

if you are getting the text from web, make sure you put a space before and after the /n that solved my problem

as example (php):

echo $item_detail['item_title']."  \n ";

Answer 10

Expanding on Olie's answer... In Swift the code for updating the string from the database is:

let dbString = // get the string from the db.
myTextField.text = dbString.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("\\\\n", withString: "\n")

Took me a while to figure out, so thought I would share.

Answer 11

You're saving a literal "\n" in the database. Try saving a newline.