CCHLinkTextView

  

CCHLinkTextView makes it easy to embed links inside a UITextView and receive events for short and long taps. It looks and behaves similar to table cells used in popular Twitter apps such as Twitterrific or Tweetbot. CCHLinkTextView is available under the MIT license.

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Alternatives

When using iOS 7's built-in link detection via NSLinkAttributeName, you will find that textView:shouldInteractWithURL:inRange: is only called when the user presses the link for a certain amount of time. This delay is frustrating for users because they expect an app to react instantly on taps.

In contrast to UITextView, CCHLinkTextView works great in UITableViews – even with userInteractionEnabled set to YES – because touches outside links are passed through to the UITableView. In addition, CCHLinkTextView provides events for short and long taps.

Compared to OHAttributedLabel and TTTAttributeLabel, CCHLinkTextView is written for iOS 7 using TextKit functionality. This makes for a simpler implementation avoiding custom drawing code using CoreText.

In contrast to STTweetLabel, CCHLinkTextView is a subclass of UITextView because UILabel has limited TextKit support and adding this functionality can be quite hacky. CCHLinkTextView supports all of UITextView's features and can also be used from within storyboards. Whereas STTweetLabel places its links on certain hotwords, you can mark any text range as a link with CCHLinkTextView.

Usage

Installation

Use CocoaPods to integrate CCHLinkTextView into your project. Minimum deployment target is iOS 7.0 because this project uses Text Kit functionality.

platform :ios, '7.0'
pod "CCHLinkTextView"

Creating CCHLinkTextViews

A CCHLinkTextView can be created manually via initWithFrame: or inside a storyboard. By default, it is non-editable and non-selectable as this would interfere with the link gestures. Otherwise, a CCHLinkTextView behaves like a UITextView.

Setting up links

Text can be marked as a link by adding the attribute CCHLinkAttributeName to the range of the link:

NSMutableAttributedString *attributedText = [linkTextView.attributedText mutableCopy];
[attributedText addAttribute:CCHLinkAttributeName value:@"0" range:NSMakeRange(0, 20)];
linkTextView.attributedText = attributedText;

If you have code using NSLinkAttributeName, you can simply replace this attribute with CCHLinkAttributeName.

The value can be anything you want and will be provided when the link fires (see below).

Receiving link gestures

Embedding CCHLinkTextViews into table view cells

License (MIT)

Copyright (C) 2014 Claus Höfele

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.