Creating Clickable Hyperlinks from a URL, Phone Number or Address

November 21, 2010

The following tips shows a quick way to create clickable hyperlinks using a UITextView. The trick is to set the dataDetectorTypes property to specify the data type you are after, from there, upon a tap the link will launch the appropriate application, namely Safari, Phone Dialer or Maps.


Clickable URL
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// Create textview, centering horizontally
UITextView *textView = [[UITextView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 10, 320, 50)];
 
// Set font, background and alignment
[textView setFont:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:16]];
[textView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor blackColor]];
[textView setTextAlignment:UITextAlignmentCenter];
 
// Unfortunately the link will show as blue even with this setting
//  [textView setTextColor:[UIColor greenColor]];
 
// Edit and scrolling off  
[textView setEditable:NO];
[textView setScrollEnabled:NO];
 
// Set data type to specify URL/link
[textView setDataDetectorTypes:UIDataDetectorTypeLink];
 
// Set text as URL
[textView setText:@"iOSDeveloperTips.com"];  
 
[self.view addSubview:textView];
Clickable Phone Number

To change up the code to support a clickable phone number, replace lines 16-21 with the following:

// Set data type to phone number
[textView setDataDetectorTypes:UIDataDetectorTypePhoneNumber];
 
// Set text as phone number
[textView setText:@"800-555-1212"];
Clickable Address

With the release of iOS 4.0, you can now create a clickable address. Tapping on the link will launch the Maps application.

// Set data type to address
[textView setDataDetectorTypes:UIDataDetectorTypeAddress];
 
// Set text as phone number
[textView setText:@"1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014"];