Programming multiline mixed uiview types text - ios

Question

How would I elegantly achieve multiline text that includes a combination of links, plain text, and formatted words? Right now, all I can think of is breaking each word into a token and displaying/positioning it differently (UILabel, UIButton, etc), however, this is terribly inefficient. Here is an example of what I am trying to achieve from the comments feature in Instagram.
Notice, formatted link to user name, indented multiline text, and possibility of inline links to hashtags.

Answer 1

Edit Sep 14
So I was able to implement something very similar using FTCoreTextView
It was simple to import/implement. I am using the code as a static library in my ARC project.
The following are the core components:
I use a method to set the style for my cell's FTCoreTextView
(NSArray *)getCoreTextStyle{
NSMutableArray *result = [NSMutableArray array];
FTCoreTextStyle *defaultStyle = [FTCoreTextStyle new];
defaultStyle.name = FTCoreTextTagDefault; //though the default name is already set to FTCoreTextTagDefault
defaultStyle.font = [UIFont fontWithName:#"Helvetica Neue" size:14.f];
defaultStyle.textAlignment = FTCoreTextAlignementLeft;
[result addObject:defaultStyle];
FTCoreTextStyle *linkStyle = [defaultStyle copy];
linkStyle.name = FTCoreTextTagLink;
linkStyle.color = [UIColor blueColor];//[del colorWithHexString:#"3aa98"];
linkStyle.font = [UIFont fontWithName:#"Helvetica Neue" size:14.f];
[result addObject:linkStyle];
return result;
}
Then in your cell you would set the text for the view, assign a delegate, etc. (My FTCoreTextView overrides a plain IBOutlet for a UIView)
[myFTTView setDelegate:self];
[myFTTView addStyles:[self getCoreTextStyle]];
[myFTTView setText:[self parseLinks:text]];
[myFTTView setNeedsDisplay];
Parse links is a method i separately define to search for hashtags and usernames and then set a style when they are found (this code is rough and leaves much to be improved. I am considering switching to CoreTextHyperlink which already has code search for hashtags and #usernames.)
-(NSString *) parseLinks: (NSString *)cap{
NSArray *split = [cap componentsSeparatedByString:#" "];
NSMutableArray *words = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithArray:split];
for (NSString *word in split){
if([word hasPrefix:#"#"] || [word hasPrefix:#"#"]){
NSString *reformat = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#%#|%#%#", hashlink,word, word, endhashlink];
[words replaceObjectAtIndex:[split indexOfObject:word] withObject:reformat];
}
}
return [words componentsJoinedByString:#" "];
}
Last but not least, the method called after a tag/username is clicked
- (void)coreTextView:(FTCoreTextView *)acoreTextView receivedTouchOnData:(NSDictionary *)data {
NSString *key = [data objectForKey:#"url"];
if([key hasPrefix:#"#"]){
//do something for tag
}
else{
//do something for user.
}
return;
}

Answer 2

Two ways I can think of:
use CoreText with NSAttributedStrings. Difficult to achieve, especially for the links (you'll have to register a listener somewhere, compute on which "link" you "clicked", ...), but provides the best performance.
use a UIWebView and write the HTML on-the-fly. Less performant, but much more flexible.