iosuitextfielduitextview
I am developing an application where user has to write some information. For this purpose I need a UITextField which is multi-line (in general UITextField is a single line).
As I'm Googling I find a answer of using UITextView instead of UITextfield for this purpose.
While the UITextField class has no max length property, it's relatively simple to get this functionality by setting the text field's delegate and implementing the following delegate method:
Objective-C
- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string {
// Prevent crashing undo bug – see note below.
if(range.length + range.location > textField.text.length)
{
return NO;
}
NSUInteger newLength = [textField.text length] + [string length] - range.length;
return newLength <= 25;
}
Swift
func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
let currentCharacterCount = textField.text?.count ?? 0
if range.length + range.location > currentCharacterCount {
return false
}
let newLength = currentCharacterCount + string.count - range.length
return newLength <= 25
}
Before the text field changes, the UITextField asks the delegate if the specified text should be changed. The text field has not changed at this point, so we grab it's current length and the string length we're inserting (either through pasting copied text or typing a single character using the keyboard), minus the range length. If this value is too long (more than 25 characters in this example), return NO to prohibit the change.
When typing in a single character at the end of a text field, the range.location will be the current field's length, and range.length will be 0 because we're not replacing/deleting anything. Inserting into the middle of a text field just means a different range.location, and pasting multiple characters just means string has more than one character in it.
Deleting single characters or cutting multiple characters is specified by a range with a non-zero length, and an empty string. Replacement is just a range deletion with a non-empty string.
As is mentioned in the comments, there is a bug with UITextField that can lead to a crash.
If you paste in to the field, but the paste is prevented by your validation implementation, the paste operation is still recorded in the application's undo buffer. If you then fire an undo (by shaking the device and confirming an Undo), the UITextField will attempt to replace the string it thinks it pasted in to itself with an empty string. This will crash because it never actually pasted the string in to itself. It will try to replace a part of the string that doesn't exist.
Fortunately you can protect the UITextField from killing itself like this. You just need to ensure that the range it proposes to replace does exist within its current string. This is what the initial sanity check above does.
func textView(_ textView: UITextView, shouldChangeTextIn range: NSRange, replacementText text: String) -> Bool {
let str = (textView.text + text)
if str.characters.count <= 10 {
return true
}
textView.text = str.substring(to: str.index(str.startIndex, offsetBy: 10))
return false
}
Hope it's helpful to you.
You will only need a ScrollView if the contents you have now do not fit in the iPhone screen. (If you are adding the ScrollView as the superview of the components just to make the TextField scroll up when keyboard comes up, then it's not needed.)
The standard way to prevent the TextFields from being covered by the keyboard is to move the view up/down whenever the keyboard is shown.
Here is some sample code:
#define kOFFSET_FOR_KEYBOARD 80.0
-(void)keyboardWillShow {
// Animate the current view out of the way
if (self.view.frame.origin.y >= 0)
{
[self setViewMovedUp:YES];
}
else if (self.view.frame.origin.y < 0)
{
[self setViewMovedUp:NO];
}
}
-(void)keyboardWillHide {
if (self.view.frame.origin.y >= 0)
{
[self setViewMovedUp:YES];
}
else if (self.view.frame.origin.y < 0)
{
[self setViewMovedUp:NO];
}
}
-(void)textFieldDidBeginEditing:(UITextField *)sender
{
if ([sender isEqual:mailTf])
{
//move the main view, so that the keyboard does not hide it.
if (self.view.frame.origin.y >= 0)
{
[self setViewMovedUp:YES];
}
}
}
//method to move the view up/down whenever the keyboard is shown/dismissed
-(void)setViewMovedUp:(BOOL)movedUp
{
[UIView beginAnimations:nil context:NULL];
[UIView setAnimationDuration:0.3]; // if you want to slide up the view
CGRect rect = self.view.frame;
if (movedUp)
{
// 1. move the view's origin up so that the text field that will be hidden come above the keyboard
// 2. increase the size of the view so that the area behind the keyboard is covered up.
rect.origin.y -= kOFFSET_FOR_KEYBOARD;
rect.size.height += kOFFSET_FOR_KEYBOARD;
}
else
{
// revert back to the normal state.
rect.origin.y += kOFFSET_FOR_KEYBOARD;
rect.size.height -= kOFFSET_FOR_KEYBOARD;
}
self.view.frame = rect;
[UIView commitAnimations];
}
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
// register for keyboard notifications
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:@selector(keyboardWillShow)
name:UIKeyboardWillShowNotification
object:nil];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:@selector(keyboardWillHide)
name:UIKeyboardWillHideNotification
object:nil];
}
- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated
{
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
// unregister for keyboard notifications while not visible.
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self
name:UIKeyboardWillShowNotification
object:nil];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self
name:UIKeyboardWillHideNotification
object:nil];
}
Best Answer
UITextFieldis specifically one-line only.Your Google search is correct, you need to use
UITextViewinstead ofUITextFieldfor display and editing of multiline text.In Interface Builder, add a
UITextViewwhere you want it and select the "editable" box. It will be multiline by default.