Swift- Change font on an HTML string that has its own Styles

Swift 4 solution

  • NSAttributedString extension with convenience initializer
  • Enumerates through the attributed string (HTML document) font attributes, and replaces with the provided UIFont
  • Preserves original HTML font sizes, or uses font-size from provided UIFont, @see useDocumentFontSize parameter
  • This method can simply convert HTML to NSAttributedString, without the overload of manipulating with fonts, just skip the font parameter, @see guard statement
extension NSAttributedString {

    convenience init(htmlString html: String, font: UIFont? = nil, useDocumentFontSize: Bool = true) throws {
        let options: [NSAttributedString.DocumentReadingOptionKey : Any] = [
            .documentType: NSAttributedString.DocumentType.html,
            .characterEncoding: String.Encoding.utf8.rawValue
        ]

        let data = html.data(using: .utf8, allowLossyConversion: true)
        guard (data != nil), let fontFamily = font?.familyName, let attr = try? NSMutableAttributedString(data: data!, options: options, documentAttributes: nil) else {
            try self.init(data: data ?? Data(html.utf8), options: options, documentAttributes: nil)
            return
        }

        let fontSize: CGFloat? = useDocumentFontSize ? nil : font!.pointSize
        let range = NSRange(location: 0, length: attr.length)
        attr.enumerateAttribute(.font, in: range, options: .longestEffectiveRangeNotRequired) { attrib, range, _ in
            if let htmlFont = attrib as? UIFont {
                let traits = htmlFont.fontDescriptor.symbolicTraits
                var descrip = htmlFont.fontDescriptor.withFamily(fontFamily)

                if (traits.rawValue & UIFontDescriptorSymbolicTraits.traitBold.rawValue) != 0 {
                    descrip = descrip.withSymbolicTraits(.traitBold)!
                }

                if (traits.rawValue & UIFontDescriptorSymbolicTraits.traitItalic.rawValue) != 0 {
                    descrip = descrip.withSymbolicTraits(.traitItalic)!
                }

                attr.addAttribute(.font, value: UIFont(descriptor: descrip, size: fontSize ?? htmlFont.pointSize), range: range)
            }
        }

        self.init(attributedString: attr)
    }

}

Usage-1 (Replace font)

let attr = try? NSAttributedString(htmlString: "<strong>Hello</strong> World!", font: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 34, weight: .thin))

Usage-2 (NSMutableAttributedString example)

let attr = try! NSMutableAttributedString(htmlString: "<strong>Hello</strong> World!", font: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 34, weight: .thin))
attr.append(NSAttributedString(string: " MINIMIZE", attributes: [.link: "@m"]))

Usage-3 (Only convert HTML to NSAttributedString)

let attr = try? NSAttributedString(htmlString: "<strong>Hello</strong> World!")

The setAttributes will reset all the attributes from HTML. I wrote an extension method to avoid this:

Swift 4

public convenience init?(HTMLString html: String, font: UIFont? = nil) throws {
    let options : [NSAttributedString.DocumentReadingOptionKey : Any] =
        [NSAttributedString.DocumentReadingOptionKey.documentType: NSAttributedString.DocumentType.html,
         NSAttributedString.DocumentReadingOptionKey.characterEncoding: String.Encoding.utf8.rawValue]

    guard let data = html.data(using: .utf8, allowLossyConversion: true) else {
        throw NSError(domain: "Parse Error", code: 0, userInfo: nil)
    }

    if let font = font {
        guard let attr = try? NSMutableAttributedString(data: data, options: options, documentAttributes: nil) else {
            throw NSError(domain: "Parse Error", code: 0, userInfo: nil)
        }
        var attrs = attr.attributes(at: 0, effectiveRange: nil)
        attrs[NSAttributedStringKey.font] = font
        attr.setAttributes(attrs, range: NSRange(location: 0, length: attr.length))
        self.init(attributedString: attr)
    } else {
        try? self.init(data: data, options: options, documentAttributes: nil)
    }
}

Test sample:

let html = "<html><body><h1 style=\"color:red;\">html text here</h1></body></html>"
let font = UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 16)

var attr = try NSMutableAttributedString(HTMLString: html, font: nil)
var attrs = attr?.attributes(at: 0, effectiveRange: nil)
attrs?[NSAttributedStringKey.font] as? UIFont
// print: <UICTFont: 0x7ff19fd0a530> font-family: "TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT"; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-size: 24.00pt

attr = try NSMutableAttributedString(HTMLString: html, font: font)
attrs = attr?.attributes(at: 0, effectiveRange: nil)
attrs?[NSAttributedStringKey.font] as? UIFont
// print: <UICTFont: 0x7f8c0cc04620> font-family: ".SFUIText"; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-size: 16.00pt

What you want to do, basically, is turn the NSAttributedString into an NSMutableAttributedString. 

let attributedT = // ... attributed string
let mutableT = NSMutableAttributedString(attributedString:attributedT)

Now you can call addAttributes to apply attributes, such as a different font, over any desired range, such as the whole thing.

Unfortunately, however, a font without a symbolic trait such as italic is a different font from a font with that symbolic trait. Therefore, you're going to need a utility that copies the existing symbolic traits from a font and applies them to another font:

func applyTraitsFromFont(_ f1: UIFont, to f2: UIFont) -> UIFont? {
    let t = f1.fontDescriptor.symbolicTraits
    if let fd = f2.fontDescriptor.withSymbolicTraits(t) {
        return UIFont.init(descriptor: fd, size: 0)
    }
    return nil
}

Okay, so, armed with that utility, let's try it. I'll start with some simple HTML and convert it to an attributed string, just as you are doing:

let html = "<p>Hello <i>world</i>, hello</p>"
let data = html.data(using: .utf8)!
let att = try! NSAttributedString.init(
    data: data, options: [NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute: NSHTMLTextDocumentType],
    documentAttributes: nil)
let matt = NSMutableAttributedString(attributedString:att)

As you can see, I've converted to an NSMutableAttributedString, as I advised. Now I'll cycle thru the style runs in terms of font, altering to a different font while using my utility to apply the existing traits:

matt.enumerateAttribute(
    NSFontAttributeName,
    in:NSMakeRange(0,matt.length),
    options:.longestEffectiveRangeNotRequired) { value, range, stop in
        let f1 = value as! UIFont
        let f2 = UIFont(name:"Georgia", size:20)!
        if let f3 = applyTraitsFromFont(f1, to:f2) {
            matt.addAttribute(
                NSFontAttributeName, value:f3, range:range)
        }
    }

Here's the result:

enter image description here

Obviously you could tweak this procedure to be even more sophisticated, depending on your design needs.

Tags:

Ios

Swift

Nsattributedstring

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