Need to get NSRanges of multiple @ symbols and the text that follows them in UILabel's text

Question

I have a UILabel that contains text like this:

"Hi, my name is John Smith. Here is my twitter handle @johnsmith and I work for this company @somerandomcompany. Thanks for watching!"

I need to find the ranges for all of the @ symbols and whatever text comes right after them until a space appears, so that I can then bold both the symbol and any text that comes after it until a space appears:

"Hi, my name is John Smith. Here is my twitter handle @johnsmith and I work for this company @somerandomcompany. Thanks for watching!"

I am familiar with using rangeOfString but I have never had to handle multiple ranges like this. I need these NSRanges so that I can pass them into a UILabel category that will bold the appropriate text.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

One way like this :

NSString *strText = @"Hi, my name is John Smith. Here is my twitter handle @johnsmith. Thanks for watching! @somerandomcompany looks good";

//array to store range
NSMutableArray *arrRanges = [NSMutableArray array];

//seperate `@` containing strings
NSArray *arrFoundText = [strText componentsSeparatedByString:@"@"];

//iterate
for(int i=0; i<[arrFoundText count];i++)
{
    //leave first substring as it doesnot contain `@` after string
    if (i==0) {
        continue;
    }

    //get sub string
    NSString *subStr = arrFoundText[i];
    //get range for space
    NSRange rangeSub = [subStr rangeOfString:@" "];
    if (rangeSub.location != NSNotFound)
    {
        //get string with upto space range
        NSString *findBoldText = [subStr substringToIndex:rangeSub.location];
        NSLog(@"%@",findBoldText);

        //create range for bold text
        NSRange boldRange = [strText rangeOfString:findBoldText];
        boldRange.location -= 1;
        //add to array
        [arrRanges addObject:NSStringFromRange(boldRange)];
    }
}
NSLog(@"Ranges : %@",arrRanges);