iPhone: Change Keyboard language programmatically

Question

I am trying to provide a different language support on my iOS 5.x application whenever native Keyboard is opened. Provide this language in native keyboard programmatically. Could someone guide me how can i support it? I saw a carbon framework, but looks like its for Mac apps.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can do it starting from iOS 7 on a per UIResponder basis. There is textInputMode property in UIResponder class. It is readonly, but the documentation says:

The text input mode identifies the language and keyboard displayed when this responder is active.

For responders, the system normally displays a keyboard that is based on the user’s language preferences. You can redefine this property and use it to return a different text input mode in cases where you want a responder to use a specific keyboard. The user can still change the keyboard while the responder is active, but switching away to another responder and then back restores the keyboard you specified.

In my project I created a subclass of UITextField and defined a new property called userDefinedKeyboardLanguage. I also overrode above mentioned textInputMode method. It looks similar to the following:

- (UITextInputMode *) textInputMode {
    for (UITextInputMode *tim in [UITextInputMode activeInputModes]) {
        if ([[Utilities langFromLocale:userDefinedKeyboardLanguage] isEqualToString:[Utilities langFromLocale:tim.primaryLanguage]]) return tim;
    }
    return [super textInputMode];
}

I have also a custom method +(NSString *)langFromLocale:(NSString *)locale in my Utilities class which looks like this:

+ (NSString *)langFromLocale:(NSString *)locale {
    NSRange r = [locale rangeOfString:@"_"];
    if (r.length == 0) r.location = locale.length;
    NSRange r2 = [locale rangeOfString:@"-"];
    if (r2.length == 0) r2.location = locale.length;
    return [[locale substringToIndex:MIN(r.location, r2.location)] lowercaseString];
}

Now my custom textfield class can change the keyboard input language simply by setting userDefinedKeyboardLanguage property to the desired language.