Apple make this really difficult. As others point out, the delegate method is called, but only when isEditable
is false
, or when the user does a tap and hold on the attachment. If you want to be informed about a simple tap interaction during editing, forget it.
I went down the touchesBegan:
and hitTest:
paths, both with problems. The touches methods are called after the UITextView
has already handled the interaction, and the hitTest:
is too crude, because it messes with the first responder status and so forth.
My solution in the end was gesture recognizers. Apple are using those internally, which explains why touchesBegan:
is not really viable in the first place: the gesture recognizers have already handled the event.
I created a new gesture recognizer class for use with a UITextView
. It simply checks for the location of the tap, and if it is an attachment, it handles it. I make all the other gesture recognizers subordinate to my one, so we get first look at the events, and the others only come into play if our one fails.
The gesture recognizer class is below, along with an extension for adding it to UITextView
. I add it in my UITextView
subclass in awakeFromNib
, like this. (You needn't use a subclass if you don't have one.)
override func awakeFromNib() {
super.awakeFromNib()
let recognizer = AttachmentTapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(handleAttachmentTap(_:)))
add(recognizer)
and I handle the action by calling the existing UITextViewDelegate
method textView(_:,shouldInteractWith:,in:,interaction:)
. You could just as easily put the handling code directly in the action, rather than using the delegate.
@IBAction func handleAttachmentTap(_ sender: AttachmentTapGestureRecognizer) {
let _ = delegate?.textView?(self, shouldInteractWith: sender.attachment!, in: NSRange(location: sender.attachmentCharacterIndex!, length: 1), interaction: .invokeDefaultAction)
}
Here is the main class.
import UIKit
import UIKit.UIGestureRecognizerSubclass
/// Recognizes a tap on an attachment, on a UITextView.
/// The UITextView normally only informs its delegate of a tap on an attachment if the text view is not editable, or a long tap is used.
/// If you want an editable text view, where you can short cap an attachment, you have a problem.
/// This gesture recognizer can be added to the text view, and will add requirments in order to recognize before any built-in recognizers.
class AttachmentTapGestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer {
/// Character index of the attachment just tapped
private(set) var attachmentCharacterIndex: Int?
/// The attachment just tapped
private(set) var attachment: NSTextAttachment?
override func touchesBegan(_ touches: Set<UITouch>, with event: UIEvent) {
attachmentCharacterIndex = nil
attachment = nil
let textView = view as! UITextView
if touches.count == 1, let touch = touches.first, touch.tapCount == 1 {
let point = touch.location(in: textView)
let glyphIndex: Int? = textView.layoutManager.glyphIndex(for: point, in: textView.textContainer, fractionOfDistanceThroughGlyph: nil)
let index: Int? = textView.layoutManager.characterIndexForGlyph(at: glyphIndex ?? 0)
if let characterIndex = index, characterIndex < textView.textStorage.length {
if NSAttachmentCharacter == (textView.textStorage.string as NSString).character(at: characterIndex) {
attachmentCharacterIndex = characterIndex
attachment = textView.textStorage.attribute(.attachment, at: characterIndex, effectiveRange: nil) as? NSTextAttachment
state = .recognized
} else {
state = .failed
}
}
} else {
state = .failed
}
}
}
extension UITextView {
/// Add an attachment recognizer to a UITTextView
func add(_ attachmentRecognizer: AttachmentTapGestureRecognizer) {
for other in gestureRecognizers ?? [] {
other.require(toFail: attachmentRecognizer)
}
addGestureRecognizer(attachmentRecognizer)
}
}
This same approach could presumably be used for taps on links.