Detecting taps on attributed text in a UITextView in iOS

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I just wanted to help others a little more. Following on from Shmidt’s response it’s possible to do exactly as I had asked in my original question.

1) Create an attributed string with custom attributes applied to the clickable words. eg.

NSAttributedString* attributedString = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"a clickable word" attributes:@{ @"myCustomTag" : @(YES) }];
[paragraph appendAttributedString:attributedString];

2) Create a UITextView to display that string, and add a UITapGestureRecognizer to it. Then handle the tap:

- (void)textTapped:(UITapGestureRecognizer *)recognizer
{
    UITextView *textView = (UITextView *)recognizer.view;

    // Location of the tap in text-container coordinates

    NSLayoutManager *layoutManager = textView.layoutManager;
    CGPoint location = [recognizer locationInView:textView];
    location.x -= textView.textContainerInset.left;
    location.y -= textView.textContainerInset.top;

    // Find the character that's been tapped on

    NSUInteger characterIndex;
    characterIndex = [layoutManager characterIndexForPoint:location
                                           inTextContainer:textView.textContainer
                  fractionOfDistanceBetweenInsertionPoints:NULL];

    if (characterIndex < textView.textStorage.length) {

        NSRange range;
        id value = [textView.attributedText attribute:@"myCustomTag" atIndex:characterIndex effectiveRange:&range];

        // Handle as required...

        NSLog(@"%@, %d, %d", value, range.location, range.length);

    }
}

So easy when you know how!

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