Max length UITextField

Question

When I've tried How to you set the maximum number of characters that can be entered into a UITextField using swift?, I saw that if I use all 10 characters, I can't erase the character too.

The only thing I can do is to cancel the operation (delete all the characters together).

Does anyone know how to not block the keyboard (so that I can't add other letters/symbols/numbers, but I can use the backspace)?

Answer 1

With Swift 5 and iOS 12, try the following implementation of textField(_:shouldChangeCharactersIn:replacementString:) method that is part of the UITextFieldDelegate protocol:

func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
    guard let textFieldText = textField.text,
        let rangeOfTextToReplace = Range(range, in: textFieldText) else {
            return false
    }
    let substringToReplace = textFieldText[rangeOfTextToReplace]
    let count = textFieldText.count - substringToReplace.count + string.count
    return count <= 10
}

• The most important part of this code is the conversion from range (NSRange) to rangeOfTextToReplace (Range<String.Index>). See this video tutorial to understand why this conversion is important.
• To make this code work properly, you should also set the textField's smartInsertDeleteType value to UITextSmartInsertDeleteType.no. This will prevent the possible insertion of an (unwanted) extra space when performing a paste operation.

---

The complete sample code below shows how to implement textField(_:shouldChangeCharactersIn:replacementString:) in a UIViewController:

import UIKit

class ViewController: UIViewController, UITextFieldDelegate {

    @IBOutlet var textField: UITextField! // Link this to a UITextField in Storyboard

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        textField.smartInsertDeleteType = UITextSmartInsertDeleteType.no
        textField.delegate = self
    }

    func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
        guard let textFieldText = textField.text,
            let rangeOfTextToReplace = Range(range, in: textFieldText) else {
                return false
        }
        let substringToReplace = textFieldText[rangeOfTextToReplace]
        let count = textFieldText.count - substringToReplace.count + string.count
        return count <= 10
    }

}