UITextView alignment is changing on its own - iphone

Question

I have a UITextView with RTL alignment.
If the user enters text, and dismisses keyboard, the alignment remains - RTL.
But if the user chooses empty string, I change the string to the place holder, and the alignment flips to be LTR.
I tried to explicitly ask for RTL, but it didn't help.
-(void)cancelPad{
[userTextView resignFirstResponder];
userTextView.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentRight;
userTextView.text = #"place holder text";
}
-(void)doneWithNumberPad{
if ([userTextView.text isEqualToString:#""]) {
[self cancelPad];
}
[userTextView resignFirstResponder];
userTextView.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentRight;
}
Somebody have any ideas?

Answer 1

Instead of:
userTextView.text = ""
you should put:
userTextView.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"\u202b"];
This is the UTF-8 character for "starting RTL"

Answer 2

Eventually I just added a label with the place holder text.
When the keyboard is shown, the placeholderLabel is hidden.
If the keyboard is dismissed with empty text, the placeholderLabel is shown again.
If there is a more proper solution, do not hesitate to post it here.

Answer 3

first:
in the .h file add this
UIViewController<UITextFieldDelegate>
assign your text field to this
userTextView.delegate =self;
then use this methods and put your code in
-(BOOL) textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField{
}
-(BOOL)textFieldShouldEndEditing:(UITextField *)textField{
}
-(BOOL) textFieldShouldReturn:(UITextField *)textField{
}
Example :
-(BOOL)textFieldShouldEndEditing:(UITextField *)textField{
if ([userTextView.text isEqualToString:#""]) {
[self cancelPad];
}
[userTextView resignFirstResponder];
userTextView.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentRight;
}