Iphone – select a specific block of text in a UITextField

iphoneiphone-sdk-3.0textselectionuitextfield

I have a UITextField in my iPhone app. I know how to make the text field select all of its text, but how can change the selection? Say I wanted to select the last 5 characters, or a specific range of characters, is that possible? if not, can I move the lines marking the beginning and end of the selection, as if the user is dragging them?

Best Answer

With UITextField, you cannot. But if you see the headers, you have _selectedRange and others that might be used if you add some categories to it ;)


Update for iOS5 and above :

Now UITextField and UITextView conform to UITextInput protocol so it is possible :)

Selecting the last 5 characters before the caret would be like this:

// Get current selected range , this example assumes is an insertion point or empty selection
UITextRange *selectedRange = [textField selectedTextRange];

// Calculate the new position, - for left and + for right
UITextPosition *newPosition = [textField positionFromPosition:selectedRange.start offset:-5];

// Construct a new range using the object that adopts the UITextInput, our textfield
UITextRange *newRange = [textField textRangeFromPosition:newPosition toPosition:selectedRange.start];

// Set new range
[textField setSelectedTextRange:newRange];
Related Topic