🚨V5 is now released!🚨

Atributika is a Swift library that provides a simple way to build NSAttributedString from HTML-like text, by identifying and styling tags, links, phone numbers, hashtags etc.

A standalone AtributikaViews library offers UILabel/UITextView drop-in replacements capable of displaying highlightable and clickable links, with rich customization, and proper accessibility support.

Note

Try my new library for doing Auto Layout, a typesafe reimagination of Visual Format Language: https://github.com/psharanda/FixFlex

Intro

While NSAttributedString is undoubtedly powerful, it's also a low-level API that needs a considerable amount of setup work. If your string is a template and the actual content is only known at runtime, this becomes complicated. When dealing with localizations, constructing NSAttributedString isn't straightforward either.

But wait, Atributika comes to your rescue!

let b = Attrs().font(.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 20)).foregroundColor(.red)
        
label.attributedText = "Hello <b>World</b>!!!".style(tags: ["b": b]).attributedString

Indeed, that's much simpler. Atributika is easy-to-use, declarative, flexible, and handles the rough edges for you.

Features

Atributika

• NSAttributedString builder.
• Detects and styles HTML-like tags using a custom high-speed parser.
• Detects and styles hashtags and mentions (i.e., #something and @someone).
• Identifies and styles links and phone numbers.
• Detects and styles regexes and NSDataDetector patterns.
• Styles the entire string or just specified ranges.
• Allows all the above to be chained together to parse complex strings!
• Provides a clean and expressive API to construct styles.
• Offers a separate set of detection utilities for standalone use.
• Compatible with iOS, tvOS, watchOS, and macOS.

AtributikaViews

• Custom views with highlightable and clickable links.
• Custom text styles for normal/highlighted/disabled states.
• Supports custom highlighting.

V5

V5 is a major rewrite of the project, executed in early 2023. It's not fully compatible with the previous version and requires some manual migration. The introduction of breaking changes was necessary for the project's further evolution.

Here's what's new:

NSAttributedString Building

• Completely rewritten HTML parser, which fixed a multitude of bugs and improved handling of edge cases.
• More generic and robust text transforming and attribute fine-tuning APIs.

AttributedLabel / AttributedTextView

• Moved to a standalone library, independent of Atributika.
• Offers proper accessibility support.
• Improved performance and touch handling.
• AttributedLabel is based on UILabel (lightweight, with vertically-centered text).
• AttributedTextView is based on UITextView (supports scrolling and text selection, with text aligned to the top of the frame).

New examples have been added to the Demo application, including:

• Basic web browser powered by AttributedTextView
• SwiftUI integration
• Highlightable links for Markdown documents

Examples

Detect and style tags, provide base style for the rest of string, don't forget about special html symbols

let redColor = UIColor(red:(0xD0 / 255.0), green: (0x02 / 255.0), blue:(0x1B / 255.0), alpha:1.0)
let a = Attrs().foregroundColor(redColor)

let font = UIFont(name: "AvenirNext-Regular", size: 24)!
let grayColor = UIColor(white: 0x66 / 255.0, alpha: 1)
let base = Attrs().font(font).foregroundColor(grayColor)

let str = "<a>&lt;a&gt;</a>tributik<a>&lt;/a&gt;</a>"
    .style(tags: ["a": a])
    .styleBase(base)
    .attributedString

Detect and style hashtags and mentions

let str = "#Hello @World!!!"
    .styleHashtags(Attrs().font(.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 45)))
    .styleMentions(Attrs().foregroundColor(.red))
    .attributedString

Detect and style links

let str = "Check this website http://google.com"
    .styleLinks(Attrs().foregroundColor(.blue))
    .attributedString

Detect and style phone numbers

let str = "Call me (888)555-5512"
    .stylePhoneNumbers(Attrs().foregroundColor(.red))
    .attributedString

Uber String

let links = Attrs().foregroundColor(.blue)
let phoneNumbers = Attrs().backgroundColor(.yellow)
let mentions = Attrs().font(.italicSystemFont(ofSize: 12)).foregroundColor(.black)
let b = Attrs().font(.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 12))
let u = Attrs().underlineStyle(.single)

let base = Attrs().font(.systemFont(ofSize: 12)).foregroundColor(.gray)

let str = "@all I found <u>really</u> nice framework to manage attributed strings. It is called <b>Atributika</b>. Call me if you want to know more (123)456-7890 #swift #nsattributedstring https://github.com/psharanda/Atributika"
    .style(tags: ["u": u, "b": b])
    .styleMentions(mentions)
    .styleHashtags(links)
    .styleLinks(links)
    .stylePhoneNumbers(phoneNumbers)
    .styleBase(base)
    .attributedString

AttributedLabel

let tweetLabel = AttributedLabel()

tweetLabel.numberOfLines = 0
tweetLabel.highlightedLinkAttributes = Attrs().foregroundColor(.red).attributes

let baseLinkAttrs = Attrs().foregroundColor(.blue)

let a = TagTuner {
    Attrs(baseLinkAttrs).akaLink($0.tag.attributes["href"] ?? "")
}

let hashtag = DetectionTuner {
    Attrs(baseLinkAttrs).akaLink("https://twitter.com/hashtag/\($0.text.replacingOccurrences(of: "#", with: ""))")
}

let mention = DetectionTuner {
    Attrs(baseLinkAttrs).akaLink("https://twitter.com/\($0.text.replacingOccurrences(of: "@", with: ""))")
}

let link = DetectionTuner {
    Attrs(baseLinkAttrs).akaLink($0.text)
}

let tweet = "@all I found <u>really</u> nice framework to manage attributed strings. It is called <b>Atributika</b>. Call me if you want to know more (123)456-7890 #swift #nsattributedstring https://github.com/psharanda/Atributika"

tweetLabel.attributedText = tweet
    .style(tags: ["a": a])
    .styleHashtags(hashtag)
    .styleMentions(mention)
    .styleLinks(link)
    .attributedString

tweetLabel.onLinkTouchUpInside = { _, val in
    if let linkStr = val as? String {
        if let url = URL(string: linkStr) {
            UIApplication.shared.openURL(url)
        }
    }
}

view.addSubview(tweetLabel)

Requirements

Current version is compatible with:

• Swift 5.0+
• iOS 11.0 or later
• tvOS 11.0 or later
• watchOS 4.0 or later
• macOS 10.13 or later

Note: AttributedLabel / AttributedTextView are available only on iOS

Why does Atributika have one 't' in its name?

Because in Belarusian/Russian we have one letter 't' (атрыбутыка/атрибутика). So basically it is transcription, not a real word.

Integration

Swift Package Manager

Add dependency to Package.swift file.

  dependencies: [
    .package(url: "https://github.com/psharanda/Atributika.git", .upToNextMajor(from: "5.0.0"))
  ]

Carthage

Add github "psharanda/Atributika" to your Cartfile

CocoaPods

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

pod "Atributika"
pod "AtributikaViews"

Manual

1. Add Atributika to you project as a submodule using git submodule add https://github.com/psharanda/Atributika.git
2. Open the Atributika folder & drag Atributika.xcodeproj into your project tree
3. Add Atributika.framework to your target's Link Binary with Libraries Build Phase
4. Import Atributika with import Atributika and you're ready to go

License

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