Vertically align text within a UILabel (Note : Using AutoLayout)

MELWIN picture MELWIN · Feb 19, 2015 · Viewed 74.8k times · Source

I am Copying the same Question asked Before Question. I have tried the solutions given and was not able to solve it since sizetofit was not effective when I use Autolayout.

first screenshot

The expected display is like below.

second screenshot

Answer

Daniel Galasko picture Daniel Galasko · Feb 24, 2015

Edit

In my original answer I was using the paragraph style of the label. Turns out that for multi-line labels this actually prevents the label from being multi-line. As a result I removed it from the calculation. See more about this in Github

For those of you more comfortable with using Open Source definitely look at TTTAttributedLabel where you can set the label's text alignment to TTTAttributedLabelVerticalAlignmentTop


The trick is to subclass UILabel and override drawTextInRect. Then enforce that the text is drawn at the origin of the label's bounds.

Here's a naive implementation that you can use right now:

Swift

@IBDesignable class TopAlignedLabel: UILabel {
    override func drawTextInRect(rect: CGRect) {
        if let stringText = text {
            let stringTextAsNSString = stringText as NSString
            var labelStringSize = stringTextAsNSString.boundingRectWithSize(CGSizeMake(CGRectGetWidth(self.frame), CGFloat.max),
                options: NSStringDrawingOptions.UsesLineFragmentOrigin,
                attributes: [NSFontAttributeName: font],
                context: nil).size
            super.drawTextInRect(CGRectMake(0, 0, CGRectGetWidth(self.frame), ceil(labelStringSize.height)))
        } else {
            super.drawTextInRect(rect)
        }
    }
    override func prepareForInterfaceBuilder() {
        super.prepareForInterfaceBuilder()
        layer.borderWidth = 1
        layer.borderColor = UIColor.blackColor().CGColor
    }
}

Swift 3

  @IBDesignable class TopAlignedLabel: UILabel {
    override func drawText(in rect: CGRect) {
        if let stringText = text {
            let stringTextAsNSString = stringText as NSString
            let labelStringSize = stringTextAsNSString.boundingRect(with: CGSize(width: self.frame.width,height: CGFloat.greatestFiniteMagnitude),
                                                                            options: NSStringDrawingOptions.usesLineFragmentOrigin,
                                                                            attributes: [NSFontAttributeName: font],
                                                                            context: nil).size
            super.drawText(in: CGRect(x:0,y: 0,width: self.frame.width, height:ceil(labelStringSize.height)))
        } else {
            super.drawText(in: rect)
        }
    }
    override func prepareForInterfaceBuilder() {
        super.prepareForInterfaceBuilder()
        layer.borderWidth = 1
        layer.borderColor = UIColor.black.cgColor
    }
}

Objective-C

IB_DESIGNABLE
@interface TopAlignedLabel : UILabel

@end

@implementation TopAlignedLabel

- (void)drawTextInRect:(CGRect)rect {
    if (self.text) {
        CGSize labelStringSize = [self.text boundingRectWithSize:CGSizeMake(CGRectGetWidth(self.frame), CGFLOAT_MAX)
                                                         options:NSStringDrawingUsesLineFragmentOrigin | NSStringDrawingUsesFontLeading
                                                      attributes:@{NSFontAttributeName:self.font}
                                                         context:nil].size;
        [super drawTextInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, ceilf(CGRectGetWidth(self.frame)),ceilf(labelStringSize.height))];
    } else {
        [super drawTextInRect:rect];
    }
}

- (void)prepareForInterfaceBuilder {
        [super prepareForInterfaceBuilder];
        self.layer.borderWidth = 1;
        self.layer.borderColor = [UIColor blackColor].CGColor;
}

@end

Since I used IBDesignable you can add this label to a storyboard and watch it go, this is what it looks like for me

enter image description here