Strip spaces when pasting into UITextField?

Question

If I copy abc 123, and paste it into my UITextField, I’d like abc123 to be entered. I’m trying to use shouldChangeCharactersInRange:replacementString from UITextFieldDelegate, but changing the replacementString argument doesn’t change what actually appears in the field.

I can return NO if the string contains spaces, but what I’d like to do is actually strip them at the point of entry. There doesn’t appear to be any other delegate method to do this.

How might I achieve this, preferably without subclassing the UITextField and overriding paste:?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 20 '15 at 14:05

2

You can observe UIPasteBoard for changes and change the string before paste:

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter]
   addObserver:self
   selector:@selector(pasteboardChangedNotification:)

Once you get the notification you can then get the string and replace spaces.

NSString *newString = [[[UIPasteboard generalPasteboard] string] stringByReplacingOccuranciesOfString:@" " withSting:@""]

answered Mar 20 '15 at 14:05

Nikos M.

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This won’t work if the text isn’t copied from my app. I’m actually stripping spaces from a copied new password in an email or Safari, wanting to strip spaces that may have been picked up when the customer highlights the text in the browser. – Luke Mar 21 '15 at 13:08

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 20 '15 at 14:04

0

You need to strip the spaces out of replacementString and then set the text property of the UITextField to the modified replacementString and return NO (because you have already done it manually).

answered Mar 20 '15 at 14:04

jakedunc

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 20 '15 at 14:14

0

I could achieve this behavior overriding textField:shouldChangeCharactersInRange:replacementString: making the changes inside the method to the textField (set the text to the formatted version) and returning NO.

answered Mar 20 '15 at 14:14

Dario

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Strip spaces when pasting into UITextField?

3 Answers3