An easier way to create an attributes dictionary for NSAttributedString

Installation

In your Podfile, add this line:

pod "MTStringAttributes"

pod? => https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/

Example Usage

#include <MTStringAttributes.h>

Create an attributes object

MTStringAttributes *attributes = [[MTStringAttributes alloc] init];

Set some basic properties

attributes.font             = nil;
attributes.textColor        = [UIColor redColor];
attributes.backgroundColor  = [UIColor blackColor];
attributes.strikethrough    = YES;
attributes.underline        = YES;

Some more advanced stuff

attributes.ligatures        = YES;
attributes.kern             = @(1);
attributes.outlineColor     = [UIColor blueColor];
attributes.outlineWidth     = @(2);

Finally

NSAttributedString *str     = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"The attributed string!"
                                                              attributes:[attributes dictionary]];

Parser

Relying on Slash, MTStringParser allows you to add styles to tags and then generate attributed strings from markup of those tags.

#include <MTStringParser.h>

[[MTStringParser sharedParser] addStyleWithTagName:@"red"
                                              font:[UIFont systemFontOfSize:12]
                                             color:[UIColor redColor]];

NSAttributedString *string = [[MTStringParser sharedParser]
                                attributedStringFromMarkup:@"This is a <red>red section</red>"];

And like a beautiful symphony, they work together like so:

Easily create a string attributes object

MTStringAttributes *attributes  = [[MTStringAttributes alloc] init];
attributes.font                 = [UIFont fontWithName:@"HelveticaNeue" size:14];
attributes.textColor            = [UIColor blackColor];

Add this as the default for the whole string we're about to parse

[[MTStringParser sharedParser] setDefaultAttributes:attributes];

Define a style for a tag called <relative-time> that uses this font and has this color:

[[MTStringParser sharedParser] addStyleWithTagName:@"relative-time"
                                              font:[UIFont fontWithName:@"HelveticaNeue-Bold" size:14]
                                             color:[UIColor colorWithRed:215.0/255.0 green:0 blue:0 alpha:1]];

And easily add another tag that has a font, color, background color and is underlined:

[[MTStringParser sharedparser] addStyleWithTagName:@"em"
                                              font:[UIFont systemFontOfSize:14]
                                             color:[UIColor whiteColor]
                                   backgroundColor:[UIColor blackColor]
                                     strikethrough:NO
                                         underline:YES];

Now write the markup using the tags you defined styles for:

NSString *markup = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"You can have a <em>complex<em> string that  \
uses <em>tags</em> to define where you want <em>styles</em> to be defined. You needed       \
this <relative-time>%@</relative-time>.", timeAgo];

And boom, your attributed string:

NSAttributedString *attributedString = [[MTStringParser sharedParser] attributedStringFromMarkup:markup];

Contributing

Please update and run the tests before submitting a pull request. Thanks.

Author

Adam Kirk (@atomkirk)