Emojis breaking my code in UItextView Swift 4 - ios

Question

func textView(_ textView: UITextView, shouldChangeTextIn range: NSRange, replacementText text: String) -> Bool {
if range.length + range.location > commentView.text!.count{
return false
}
let newLength = (commentView.text?.count)! + text.count - range.length
let i = charCount - newLength
if i < 30 {
charCountLabel.textColor = UIColor.red
} else {
charCountLabel.textColor = UIColor(r: 79, g: 79, b: 79)
}
charCountLabel.text = "\(i)"
return newLength < charCount
}
The above code is a character counter for a UITextView, yet when I enter a single emoji into the UITextView the editing stops, why is that?? and how would I integrate a fix
CommentView : UItextView
charCount : Int
charCountLabel : UIlabel
sc of the debugger
upon stepping though the thread I get this when I try to send another character :
further in thread
EDIT
upon going through the debugger I have found that the second emoji or any char is causing the "I" var to be some super long number same with the "newLength" ... any one got any ideas?

Answer 1

I tried running your code in a test project and hit several issues. I assumed you initialized 'charCount' with 0 to begin, but this results in 'i' being -1 when you type the first character, which then returns false for every character after that.
If you're simply trying to implement a text length counter there are easier ways to do it. The two methods below populate the proper character count in the counter label when adding/deleting regular text and emoji characters.
First method I'd try is implementing the textView delegate func textViewDidChange(_ textView: UITextView). This will update the label count after every character you type. You could also set your text color here if you want.
func textViewDidChange(_ textView: UITextView) {
// only want to update character count label for commentView
guard textView == commentView, let string = textView.text else {
return
}
// update counter label text with the current text count of the textview
charCountLabel.text = "\(string.count)"
}
The second method is to use the textView delegate you were using. Here's some code I got working in a test project. There are probably better ways than this but this will get you going.
#IBOutlet weak var commentView: UITextView!
#IBOutlet weak var charCountLabel: UILabel!
let minCount = 30
let maxCount = 120
func textView(_ textView: UITextView, shouldChangeTextIn range: NSRange, replacementText text: String) -> Bool {
// only want to update character count label for commentView
guard textView == commentView, let string = textView.text else {
return true
}
// get current text + new character being entered
var newStr = string+text
// check if this is a backspace
let isDeleting = (range.length > 0) && text.isEmpty
if isDeleting == true {
// trim last character
// you may want to drop based on the range.length, however you'll need
// to determine if the character is an emoji and adjust the number of characters
// as range.length returns a length > 1 for emojis
newStr = String(newStr.dropLast())
}
// set text color based on whether we're over the min count
charCountLabel.textColor = newStr.count < minCount ? .red : .blue
// set the character count in the counter label
charCountLabel.text = "\(newStr.count)"
// if we're less than the max count allowed, return true
return newStr.count < maxCount
}