CGLTextViewContainer

Usage

CGLTextViewContainer is a lighweight version of Jared Sinclair's excellent workaround to UITextView's notorious update problems.

It's pretty much just wholesale stolen, but it differs in a few ways: it trusts clients enough to grant them access to the internal text view, cutting the amount of code needed by about half. Has-a vs. is-a or pretends-to-be-a. It allows configuration of the text container's height. And it takes into account measurements of the text view's text container inset.

Original source here: https://github.com/jaredsinclair/JTSTextView

Hopefully, iOS 9 will continue the long chain of text improvements on iOS and we won't need these shenanigans anymore. Until then, this does seem to be a good workaround.

There is a basic example project, but, basically:

• a CGLTextViewContainer is a UIScrollView, which has, as a subview, a really, really tall text view.

• how long the text view is depends on your initialization. Mr. Sinclair chose 100,000 pts. That seems like a reasonable default. Use initWithFrame: height: to set a custom value, or just initWithFrame: to get the default.

• if you want all these nice fixes, you must not alter the delegate of the container object's text view. We're treating you like adults here, people. Earn that trust. There's a passthrough delegate provided.

• updates and improvement are welcome, but I very much hope this code is obsolete in a few months. Experiment with the official UIKit components once they're shipped for iOS9, and pray they work out for you.

Example

    // set up your text view, with a height (optionally) that you want to set your
    // internal text view to be.
    self.textViewContainer = [[CGLTextViewContainer alloc] initWithFrame:self.view.bounds height:200000];

    
    // optionally configure the underlying text view how you'd like it.
    self.textViewContainer.textView.typingAttributes = @{
                                                         NSFontAttributeName : [UIFont fontWithName:@"Menlo-BoldItalic" size:18.0]
                                                         };
    
    self.textViewContainer.textView.textContainerInset = UIEdgeInsetsMake(40.0,
                                                                          20.0,
                                                                          40.0,
                                                                          20.0);
    // and: don't you dare alter the delegate of the text view container's underlying text view. Either use the pass-through delegate or, as here, subscribe to notifications, being sure to the text container's text view as the object.
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(handleTextViewChanged:) name:UITextViewTextDidChangeNotification object:self.textViewContainer.textView];

Requirements

Installation

CGLTextViewContainer is available through CocoaPods. To install it, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod "CGLTextViewContainer"

Author

Chris Ladd, c.g.ladd@gmail.com

License

CGLTextViewContainer is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.