UIWebview selection (or a Rich Text View)

[Matthijn]

Since there is (as far as I know) no 'Rich Text View' available (multiple colors, and styles in the same view), I thought of using the UIWebView for this purpose, which should work fine.

Only there is one problem, I can't seem to retrieve the current selection of the user. With the UITextView this is possible, only that view does not support rich text editing.

So, is it possible to retrieve the selection? I've tried playing with Javascript for this purpose (since this is a UIWebView, and I am a web-developer from origins) but the events for retrieving selection don't seem to work on the iPhone browser (though it does work on the Apple Safari browser on the Mac), so that is something that won't work either.

Is this possible any way?

My idea is that people can 'mark' the text, like a marker on paper. (And some functionality, by being able to click the marked text and place a note there).

[lepetitapps]

You might want to look into one of two things. The first is the webView method stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:

This allows you to pull JavaScript values out of the web view and into the rest of your app

The other is maybe look at the pasteboard api, see if there is anything there that can help

[0063292]

After hopelessly looking for a solution to allowing the user to select text and getting the selection from a UIWebView (without having the built-in popover appear), I was wondering if you were able to resolve this? I have tried many of the techniques suggested (subclass, transparent view, subclass of UIWindow, etc.), but even if I can obtain touch events, I have yet to actually resolve turning that touch point into drawing and obtaining the underlying html selection.

It would be wonderful if the next SDK would allow a delegate for the popover when text is selected so a custom menu for the selection can be provided and javascript injected to do something useful. Ideally, I would want to:

1) receive notification from the UIWebView that text was selected and what that text was.

2) allow me to display my own popover above that selected text

3) handle the popover selection and inject javascript back into the IUWebView to do stuff like highlight text etc.

Originally Posted by lepetitapps

You might want to look into one of two things. The first is the webView method stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:

This allows you to pull JavaScript values out of the web view and into the rest of your app

The other is maybe look at the pasteboard api, see if there is anything there that can help

[Matthijn]

Nope, sorry I have not resolved this issue.

[loosy]

Originally Posted by Matthijn

Nope, sorry I have not resolved this issue.

I want to achieve the same thing you are looking for. If you would be abel to do please share it. I'm aslo hanging around to find the solution.

I've tried these two tutorials but couldn't things get to work:

Detecting taps and events on UIWebView – The right way The Spoken Word

Highlighting Text in a UIWebView Brainwash Inc. – iPhone/Mobile Development