EmojiParser-iOS

EmojiParser is simple Swift (2.2) extension to UITextView class. It adds two functions allowing you to parse an UITextView in order to replace Emoji characters such as ":-)" wich "😊".

Installation

Just include the FTEmojiParser in your XCode project and you'll we automatically get the extention in your code.

Usage

Functions

You have two functions that you can use :

func postParseStringForEmoji() -> String
func lastParseStringForEmoji() -> String

You can call those functions directly on a UITextView object since it is an extension. The first one will return the parsed string from the text attribute of the textField object. The second one is a more optimized function that you could use if you parse without waiting for the user to end his/her sentence.

Delegate

The best thing to do I guess, is to use it into the delegate of the UITextView. For instance you can use it as follow :

func textView(textView: UITextView, shouldChangeTextInRange range: NSRange, replacementText text: String) -> Bool{
	let customTriggerPonctuationSet = ";.?,! "
   		if customTriggerPonctuationSet.containsString(text){
       		self.textView.text = self.textView.lastParseStringForEmoji()
    	}
    return true
}

Hence, when a new character is added to the textView the method will be called and you'll be parsing only the lastest characters. The parsing function will called either after a ";" or a "." or after any characters included in the customTriggerPonctuationSet string.

If you want to parse at the very end you can call postParseStringForEmoji in the didEndEditing delegate method.

Dictionnary

The parser use a dictionnary to match characters to Emoji. If you want to, you can add your own (characters, emoji) tuple and the algorithm will work anyway. Here is the current dictionnary (based on Facebook Emoji) :

let tables:[String:String] = [
    ":)" : "😊",
    ";)" : "😉",
    ":D" : "😃",
    ":(" : "😞",
    ":/" : "🙁",
    ":$" : "😳",
    ":P" : "😜",
    ":*" : "😘",
    "<3" : "❤️",
    ":O" : "😮",
    "(y)" : "👍🏼",
    "3:)" : "😈",
    "-_-" : "😑",
    ":-*" : "😘",
    ":'(" : "😢",
    ":-)" : "😊",
    ";-)" : "😉",
    "O:)" : "😇",
    ":poop:" : "💩"
]

Example

I've provided a project sample. The extension is in the FTEmojiParser file. The project is a simple UITextView. When you type in your text will be transformed in "text with Emoji".