How to get the selected string from a NSTextView in Swift? - swift

Question

How to do to get the selected string from a NSTextView in Swift?
// create a range of selected text
let range = mainTextField.selectedRange()
// this works but I need a plain string not an attributed string
let str = mainTextField.textStorage?.attributedSubstring(from: range)
Maybe I have to add an intermediate step where I get the full string and then apply the range on it?

Answer 1

What about
let str = mainTextField.text.substring(with: range)
Edit:
This should work now:
let range = mainTextField.selectedRange() // Returns NSRange :-/ (instead of Range)
let str = mainTextField.string as NSString? // So we cast String? to NSString?
let substr = str?.substring(with: range) // To be able to use the range in substring(with:)

Answer 2

The code snippet in the Swift 5. That's not very hard but repeated
let string = textView.attributedString().string
let selectedRange = textView.selectedRange()
let startIndex = string.index(string.startIndex, offsetBy: selectedRange.lowerBound)
let endIndex = string.index(string.startIndex, offsetBy: selectedRange.upperBound)
let substring = textView.attributedString().string[startIndex..<endIndex]
let selectedString = String(substring)

Answer 3

In case anyone is having issues with the selectedRanges() not returning the proper range for an NSTextView, make sure that you have made your NSTextView selectable. I don't know if it's not selectable by default but I had to enable it;
textView.isSelectable = true
I was trying this in Swift 5 using #user25917 code sample above and I couldn't get the ranges no matter what. I was getting a visual confirmation the text was selected through highlighting which threw me off. This was driving me mad for a few hours.

Answer 4

This may be helpfull for you :
let textView = NSTextView(frame: NSMakeRect(0, 0, 100, 100))
let attributes = [NSForegroundColorAttributeName: NSColor.redColor(),
NSBackgroundColorAttributeName: NSColor.blackColor()]
let attrStr = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "my string", attributes: attributes)
let area = NSMakeRange(0, attrStr.length)
if let font = NSFont(name: "Helvetica Neue Light", size: 16) {
attrStr.addAttribute(NSFontAttributeName, value: font, range: area)
textView.textStorage?.appendAttributedString(attrStr)
}