How to make a box around a paragraph of NSAttributedString

Question

In HTML you can make a paragraph that has a red outline (or a dotted outline).

http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/tryit.asp?filename=trycss_outline

I was wondering if something similar can be done using NSAttributedStrings. I am not looking to outline each character, I am looking to place the entire chunk of inside a box and that box would have a border. Is this possible with NSAttributedString or even CoreText?

I have see this (How to draw a border around a paragraph in UILabel?) solution, but I don't want to add a layer on top of the text, I would rather have it be a part of the text.

Answer 1

Sounds like you'll want a UITextView subclass with some custom drawing. Here's some code for a playground that should do the trick. You can tweak the details to get it looking how you like, but this is the basic idea.

And here's a cheatsheet for custom drawing that I always use: http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/An_iOS_7_Graphics_Tutorial_using_Core_Graphics_and_Core_Image

import UIKit
import XCPlayground

let container = UIView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 500, height: 500))
container.backgroundColor = UIColor(white: 0.95, alpha: 1.0 )
XCPShowView( "Container", container )

class DottedTextView: UITextView {

    override func drawRect(rect: CGRect) {

        let context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()
        CGContextSetLineWidth( context, 20.0 )
        CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor(context, UIColor.redColor().CGColor)
        let dashArray: [CGFloat] = [ 6, 4 ]
        CGContextSetLineDash( context, 3, dashArray, dashArray.count )
        CGContextStrokeRect( context, rect )
    }

}

let textView = DottedTextView(frame: CGRect(x: 20, y: 20, width: 300, height: 200) )
container.addSubview( textView )
textView.text = "Bacon ipsum dolor amet ball tip kielbasa brisket drumstick pastrami pork chicken shankle. Ribeye cow doner shankle, alcatra pork chop flank corned beef t-bone shoulder prosciutto."