CXAHyperlinkLabel

A drop-in and easy-to-use replacement for UILabel for iOS 6, supports handling link click and long press with block that provides information for URL, the range and rect of URL.

Installation

CXAHyperlinkLabel requires CoreText.framework, add it to Build Phases in your build target.

Drop CXAHyperlinkLabel.{h,m} and NSAttributedString+CXACoreTextFrameSize.{h,m} into your project, and add #include "CXAHyperlinkLabel.h" to the top of classes which will use it.

How to Use

Use it as the UILabel. To support links inside text, first you need to extract the URLs and the releated ranges, and tell CXAHyperlinkLabel with the method - (void)setURL:range:. To change the style of current touching link, set it with linkAttributesWhenTouching property. You can also tell CXAHyperlinkLabel what to do after clicking and/or long pressing a link with the block properties URLClickHandler and URLLongPressHandler.

Header At a Glance

CXAHyperlinkLabel.h

@class CXAHyperlinkLabel;

typedef void (^CXAHyperlinkLabelURLHandler)(CXAHyperlinkLabel *label, NSURL *URL, NSRange textRange, NSArray *textRects);

@interface CXAHyperlinkLabel : UILabel

@property (nonatomic, copy) CXAHyperlinkLabelURLHandler URLClickHandler;
@property (nonatomic, copy) CXAHyperlinkLabelURLHandler URLLongPressHandler;
@property (nonatomic, strong) NSDictionary *linkAttributesWhenTouching;

- (void)setURL:(NSURL *)URL forRange:(NSRange)range;
- (void)setURLs:(NSArray *)URLs forRanges:(NSArray *)ranges;
- (void)removeURLForRange:(NSRange)range;
- (void)removeAllURLs;
- (NSURL *)URLAtPoint:(CGPoint)point effectiveRange:(NSRangePointer)effectiveRange;

@end

NSAttributedString+CXACoreTextFrameSize.h

@interface NSAttributedString (CXACoreTextFrameSize)

- (CGSize)cxa_coreTextFrameSizeWithConstraints:(CGSize)size;

@end

Clone and run the demo!

Bonus

This project also includes a category for NSString NSString (CXAHyperlinkParser) to parse simple HTML text (only a and br tags are supported). Extract links and ranges from plain text is also supported. It's very lightweight to save you from some huge library — Don't use a shotgun to kill a butterfly.

NSString (CXAHyperlinkParser) requires libxml2. To install, drop NSString+CXAHyperlinkParser.{h,m} to your project, add libxml2.2.dylib to Build Phases and don't forget to set $(SDK_ROOT)/usr/include/libxml2 in Header Search Paths of Build Settings in your build target.

Header At a Glance

@interface NSString (CXAHyperlinkParser)

+ (NSString *)stringWithHTMLText:(NSString *)HTMLText URLs:(NSArray **)URLs URLRanges:(NSArray **)URLRanges;
+ (NSString *)stringWithHTMLText:(NSString *)HTMLText baseURL:(NSURL *)baseURL URLs:(NSArray **)URLs URLRanges:(NSArray **)URLRanges;
+ (void)getURLs:(NSArray **)URLs URLRanges:(NSArray **)URLRanges forPlainText:(NSString *)plainText;

@end

Limitation

In order to get positions for links, CXAHyperlinkLabel draws its text from the ground-up via Core Text. Some rarely used or hard-to-implement attributes is currently not supported yet:

• NSStrikethroughStyleAttributeName
• hyphenationFactor of NSParagraphStyle

Creator

• GitHub: https://github.com/cxa
• Twitter: @_cxa
• Apps available in App Store: http://lazyapps.com

License

Under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more information.