I think all your problems are because of incorrect order of instructions.
You have to
- Set text aligment
- Find required substrings and add specific attributes to them
- And only then highlight strings with subviews.
Also you will not need to use "a workaround for getting the correct width of the string since I'm always using the monospaced Menlo font" in such a case.
I have simplified your code a little to make it more understandable.
Result:
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
NSDictionary *basicAttributes = @{ NSFontAttributeName : [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:18],
NSForegroundColorAttributeName : [UIColor blackColor] };
NSDictionary *attributes = @{ NSFontAttributeName : [UIFont systemFontOfSize:15],
NSForegroundColorAttributeName : [UIColor darkGrayColor]};
_textView.attributedText = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:
@"*This* is **awesome** @mention `code` more \n `code and code` #hashtag [markdown](http://google.com) __and__ @mention2 {#FFFFFF|colored text} This**will also** work but ** will not ** **work** Also, some `more code for you to see`" attributes:attributes];
_textView.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;
[self formatMarkdownCodeBlockWithAttributes:basicAttributes];
}
- (void)formatMarkdownCodeBlockWithAttributes:(NSDictionary *)attributesDict
{
NSMutableString *theString = [_textView.attributedText.string mutableCopy];
NSRegularExpression *regex = [NSRegularExpression regularExpressionWithPattern:@"`.+?`" options:NO error:nil];
NSArray *matchesArray = [regex matchesInString:theString options:NO range:NSMakeRange(0, theString.length)];
NSMutableAttributedString *theAttributedString = [_textView.attributedText mutableCopy];
for (NSTextCheckingResult *match in matchesArray)
{
NSRange range = [match range];
if (range.location != NSNotFound) {
[theAttributedString addAttributes:attributesDict range:range];
}
}
_textView.attributedText = theAttributedString;
for (NSTextCheckingResult *match in matchesArray)
{
NSRange range = [match range];
if (range.location != NSNotFound) {
CGRect codeRect = [self frameOfTextRange:range];
UIView *highlightView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:codeRect];
highlightView.layer.cornerRadius = 4;
highlightView.layer.borderWidth = 1;
highlightView.backgroundColor = [UIColor yellowColor];
highlightView.layer.borderColor = [[UIColor redColor] CGColor];
[_textView insertSubview:highlightView atIndex:0];
}
}
}
- (CGRect)frameOfTextRange:(NSRange)range
{
self.textView.selectedRange = range;
UITextRange *textRange = [self.textView selectedTextRange];
CGRect rect = [self.textView firstRectForRange:textRange];
return rect;
}