UITextview dataDetectorTypeAddress - Map opened in different application

Question

I just came to know about an awesome ios feature for UITextViews i.e UITextview dataDetectorTypes. It is really useful to display text as links.

However, I noticed one thing. When the string is a physical address, Google Map is opened which is appropriate, but in a different application.

Is there any way we can open that google map in our application and not go into default iOS application wherein map is opened? So that I can go back into my application from the map. Is there any delegate method which can control this? Right now I have to minimize the application(make it run in background) and again open it which does not looks good.

Answer 1

You should use another solution for your problem.

If you use dataDetectorTypes, the link is alway opened in built-in app firstly.

You can make your action with button and custom string as below:

• push your text into an UIButton.

• make your text displayed as link with NSAtributedSring as this question, use UIButton instead of UITextView:

Underline text inside uitextview

• make action for your button when user click on it.

Good luck!

Answer 2

Pretty easy, you'll need to subclass UIApplication, override it's openURL: and pass the application class name to the target's main.m int main(...) like this:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    @autoreleasepool {
        return UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, @"MyApplication", NSStringFromClass([MyAppDelegate class]));
    }
}

intercepting the urls you can return NO for maps: schemes not to launch the Maps app and handle the address in whatever way you wish.

---

1. In the project create a new class subclassing UIApplication

2. Add the following method to be overridden:

   -(BOOL)openURL:(NSURL *)url { NSLog(@"Open %@", [url absoluteString]);

   // do something if the url scheme is maps:
   return NO;
   

   }

3. In the target's main.m file change the default int main(int argc, char *argv[]) implementation to make it to use your UIApplication class, it should look like this:

   #import < UIKit/UIKit.h> //remove the leading space to compile

   #import "LXAppDelegate.h"

   #import "LXapp.h"

   int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

   @autoreleasepool {
       return UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, NSStringFromClass([MyUIApplication class]), NSStringFromClass([MyAppDelegate class]));
   }
   

   }

That's not for ARC (i'm never using it), refer to the UIApplicationMain documentation to understand what happens and what should be probably changed for ARC support.