An easier way to compose attributed strings

When you want to compose a string of text that is attributed to a single person, you have to use the “&” character. The problem is that it is hard to type it, and it is even harder to remember. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply insert the “&” character and the “&” character would combine? You could simply type “&and” and the “&” character would be replaced by the “and” character.

If you write a lot of code and go back to read your past code, you may have noticed that the code you wrote a few days ago looks really different to the code you wrote a week ago. This is because the syntax you use to write the code has changed, often due to new features or changes in the style guide.

In my previous post, I showed how to write a string based on the attribute of another string in the same way as how we write a regular string. The problem is that we have to pre-compute all the integers and apply the ReplacingCharacter to each to make the attribute string. However, we could use a different approach to make the attribute string more efficiently.

Text feature

With TextAttributes, you can easily compile assigned character strings.

let attrs = TextAttributes()
.font(name : HelveticaNeue, size : 16)
.foregroundColor(white : 0.2, alpha : 1)
.lineHeightMultiple(1.5)

NSAttributedString(string : The brown and quick fox jumps over the lazy dog, attributes : attrs)

Characteristics

• x] Strongly typed features
• x] Chain adjustment methods
• x] Direct access to NSParagraphStyle properties
• x] Improved auto-fill function

Use

• Obtain or set TextAttributes properties:

attrs.font = UIFont(name : HelveticaNew, size : 16)
attrs.backgroundColor = .white

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The TextAttributes methods return Self to enable method chaining:

attrs
.lineHeightMultiple(1.5)
.underlineStyle(.styleSingle)

Show all methods

• Methods are also constructors:

The following are equivalent:

attrs
.font(name: HelveticaNew, size: 16)
.foregroundColor(white: 0.2, alpha: 1)

font = UIFont(name : HelveticaNeue, size : 16)
lets color = UIColor(white : 0.2, alpha : 1)

attrs
.font(font)
.foregroundColor(color)

• Access to basic vocabulary :

attrs.dictionary // Returns an attribute dictionary of type [NSAttributedString.Key : Elk]

Third party libraries:

Demo

Live updates with Injection for Xcode

References

Attribute dictionary

Form of paragraph

Setting

Carthago

Carthage is a decentralized dependency manager that automates the process of adding frameworks to your Cocoa application.

You can install Carthage with Homebrew using the following command:

$ brew update
$ brew install carthage

To integrate TextAttributes into your Xcode project with Carthage, specify it in your cartfile:

github delba/TextAttributes

Coconut palms

CocoaPods is a dependency manager for Cocoa projects.

You can install it with the following command:

$ gem install cocoapods

To include TextAttributes in your Xcode project with CocoaPods, specify it in your podfile:

use_frameworks !

pod Text attribute

GitHub

https://github.com/delba/TextAttributesToday’s blog post will be about my favourite topic — composing attributed strings. And I am happy to announce that I have come up with an easier way to do this.. Read more about nsattributedstring get attributes and let us know what you think.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is attributed string?

The idea of an attributed string is to have one string containing the hidden message for the outside message. The basic idea is that this string is encrypted with a normal string that contains the encrypted string. In a nutshell, the hidden message will be decrypted using the private key and will yield the decrypted message. However, the problem is that the private key should be kept secret, so how do we do it? The HTML5 tag allows authors to place text alongside hyperlinks, and also to direct readers to a new web page. The tag is the simplest and most necessary tag in the HTML5 family; however, its form is not straightforward.