How to get all NSRange of a particular character in a NSString? - ios

Question

I have two NSStrings: orgText and searchLetter.
I want to highlight every occurrences of the searchLetter in the orgText with a red color.
How can I get the NSRange of all occurrences of the searchLetter ?
for eg :
suppose: orgText = "abcahaiapaoiuiapplma"
searchLetter = "a".
I want to hightlight all "a" occurrences in "abcahaiapaoiuiapplma" with red color.
Thanks.

Answer 1

I wrote this method for my project - SUITextView with highlight:
- (NSMutableAttributedString*) setColor:(UIColor*)color word:(NSString*)word inText:(NSMutableAttributedString*)mutableAttributedString {
NSUInteger count = 0, length = [mutableAttributedString length];
NSRange range = NSMakeRange(0, length);
while(range.location != NSNotFound)
{
range = [[mutableAttributedString string] rangeOfString:word options:0 range:range];
if(range.location != NSNotFound) {
[mutableAttributedString setTextColor:color range:NSMakeRange(range.location, [word length])];
range = NSMakeRange(range.location + range.length, length - (range.location + range.length));
count++;
}
}
return mutableAttributedString;
}
And in my category of NSMutableAttributedString:
- (void) setTextColor:(UIColor*)color range:(NSRange)range {
// kCTForegroundColorAttributeName
[self removeAttribute:(NSString*)kCTForegroundColorAttributeName range:range]; // Work around for Apple leak
[self addAttribute:(NSString*)kCTForegroundColorAttributeName value:(id)color.CGColor range:range];
}

Answer 2

I'm not seeing any solution with regular expression, so I've created an elegant one, it may be useful for someone in the future.
- (BOOL)highlightString:(NSString *)string inText:(NSMutableAttributedString *)attributedString withColour:(UIColor *)color {
NSError *_error;
NSRegularExpression *_regexp = [NSRegularExpression regularExpressionWithPattern:string options:NSRegularExpressionCaseInsensitive error:&_error];
if (_error == nil) {
[_regexp enumerateMatchesInString:attributedString.string options:NSMatchingReportProgress range:NSMakeRange(0, attributedString.string.length) usingBlock:^(NSTextCheckingResult *result, NSMatchingFlags flags, BOOL *stop) {
if (result.numberOfRanges > 0) {
for (int i = 0; i < result.numberOfRanges; i++) {
[attributedString addAttribute:NSBackgroundColorAttributeName value:color range:[result rangeAtIndex:i]];
}
}
}];
return TRUE;
} else {
return FALSE;
}
}

Answer 3

Code crash at "setTextColor" for MutableAttributeString
instead of it use below code
NSDictionary *tempdict=[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:12.0],NSFontAttributeName,color,NSForegroundColorAttributeName, nil];
[mutableAttributedString setAttributes:tempdict range:NSMakeRange(range.location, [word length])];

Answer 4

this is an easier way of doing it
NSString *str = #"hello world";
NSMutableAttributedString *attr = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:str];
[attr addAttributes:#{NSForegroundColorAttributeName : [UIColor redColor]}
range:[str rangeOfString:#"world"]];