How to not allow typing 'space' in UITextView?

Question

I have a UITextView and I do not want the user to have any spaces in the text typed. What should I do to not allow him to use the space button? Thanks!

Answer 1

You need to

1. Specify the view controller as the delegate to your text view (you can do this either programmatically or specify the delegate in Interface Builder); and

2. Your UITextViewDelegate method shouldChangeTextInRange needs to check to see if the string to be inserted contains a space:

   - (BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range replacementText:(NSString *)text {
       if ([text rangeOfCharacterFromSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]].location != NSNotFound) {
           return NO;
       }
       return YES;
   }
   

   Or, in Swift:

   extension ViewController: UITextViewDelegate {
       func textView(_ textView: UITextView, shouldChangeTextIn range: NSRange, replacementText text: String) -> Bool {
           return text.rangeOfCharacter(from: .whitespacesAndNewlines) == nil
       }
   }
   

   Note, this is not checking to see if the replacementText is equal to space, because that is an insufficient check. Instead, this is checking whether a space occurs anywhere inside the replacement text. This is an important distinction because it's possible to paste text into the text view that might not be equal to a space, but might contain a space somewhere in the pasted value.