How to display superscript % character as string in UIlabel? - ios

Question

How to display superscript % character as string in UIlabel? I know % does not exist in unicode as a superscript but is there is any way we can display % as a superscript instead of using html tags??

Answer 1

I found this post on Stackoverflow on superscript styling text using attributed string:
NSAttributedString superscript styling
So using that, I hacked up this demo:
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
// Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
UIFont *font = [UIFont fontWithName:#"Helvetica" size:20];
UILabel *textBlock1 = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.view.bounds.size.width, self.view.bounds.size.height / 2.0)];
textBlock1.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:0.9 green:0.9 blue:0.9 alpha:1.0];
textBlock1.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;
textBlock1.font = font;
textBlock1.text = #"57%";
UILabel *textBlock2 = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, self.view.bounds.size.height / 2.0, self.view.bounds.size.width, self.view.bounds.size.height / 2.0)];
textBlock2.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:0.9 green:0.9 blue:0.9 alpha:1.0];
textBlock2.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;
NSMutableAttributedString *attributedString = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:#"57%"
attributes:#{NSFontAttributeName: font}];
[attributedString setAttributes:#{NSFontAttributeName : [UIFont fontWithName:#"Helvetica" size:10]
, NSBaselineOffsetAttributeName : #10} range:NSMakeRange(2, 1)];
textBlock2.attributedText = attributedString;
[self.view addSubview:textBlock1];
[self.view addSubview:textBlock2];
}
The result:

Answer 2

For a simple to use Swift solution, you might want to checkout HandyUIKit. After importing it into your project (e.g. via Carthage – see instructions in README) you can do something like this:
import HandyUIKit
"57^{%}".superscripted(font: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 20, weight: .medium))
This line will return an NSAttributedString which will look exactly like what you're looking for. Just assign it to a UILabels attributedText property and that's it!
If you're looking for subscripting a text, simply use subscripted(font:) instead. It will recognize structures like CO_{2}. There's also superAndSubscripted(font:) if you want to combine both.
See the docs for more information and additional examples.