How do I get the NSRange values of all the words of a UITextView in an array?

Question

I need to highlight words in my UITextView one by one. How do I get the NSRange values of all the words of a UITextView and store them in an NSArray?

Answer 1

You can use this method of NSString - enumerateSubstringsInRange:options:usingBlock:, and use NSStringEnumerationByWords for option. It will iterate over all words of your string and give you the range of it, that you can save into an array.

NSString *string = @"How do I get the NSRange values of all the words of a UITextView in an array";

NSMutableArray *words = [NSMutableArray array];
NSMutableArray *ranges = [NSMutableArray array];

[string enumerateSubstringsInRange:NSMakeRange(0, [string length])
                           options:NSStringEnumerationByWords
                        usingBlock:^(NSString *substring, NSRange substringRange, NSRange enclosingRange, BOOL *stop) {
                            [words addObject:substring];
                            [ranges addObject:[NSValue valueWithRange:substringRange]];
                        }
 ];

NSLog(@"Words:\n%@", words);
NSLog(@"Ranges:\n%@", ranges);