ios - Get tapped word from UITextView in Swift

Question

I know that this problem has been solved in Objective-C, but I haven't seen any solution to it in Swift. I have tried to convert the solution code from this post, but I'm getting errors:

func textTapped(recognizer: UITapGestureRecognizer){

    var textView: UITextView = recognizer.view as UITextView
    var layoutManager: NSLayoutManager = textView.layoutManager
    var location: CGPoint = recognizer.locationInView(textView)
    location.x -= textView.textContainerInset.left
    location.y -= textView.textContainerInset.top

    var charIndex: Int
    charIndex = layoutManager.characterIndexForPoint(location, inTextContainer: textView.textContainer, fractionOfDistanceBetweenInsertionPoints: nil)

    if charIndex < textView.textStorage.length {
        // do the stuff
        println(charIndex)
    }
}

I think the problem is in this line (see error here):

 var textView: UITextView = recognizer.view as UITextView

... which I have converted from Objective-C based on this line:

 UITextView *textView = (UITextView *)recognizer.view;

Finally, I am also in doubt about how this function should be called. As I understand it, the function should be passed to a Selector in viewDidLoad(), like this:

 let aSelector: Selector = "textTapped:"   

 let tapGesture = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: aSelector)
 tapGesture.numberOfTapsRequired = 1
 view.addGestureRecognizer(tapGesture)

Because I'm getting the before mentioned error, I'm not sure if it would work. But I'm thinking that I would need to pass the parameter in the textTapped function (recognizer) into the Selector as well. However, I've read that you can only pass the function and not any parameters.

Answer 1

For Swift 3.0 OR Above

add Tap gesture to UITextView

let tapGesture = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(tapOnTextView(_:)))
textView.addGestureRecognizer(tapGesture)

add tap handler method

@objc private final func tapOnTextView(_ tapGesture: UITapGestureRecognizer){

  let point = tapGesture.location(in: textView)
  if let detectedWord = getWordAtPosition(point)
  {

  }
}

get word from point

private final func getWordAtPosition(_ point: CGPoint) -> String?{
if let textPosition = textView.closestPosition(to: point)
{
  if let range = textView.tokenizer.rangeEnclosingPosition(textPosition, with: .word, inDirection: 1)
  {
    return textView.text(in: range)
  }
}
return nil}