How to pass touch from a UITextView to a UITableViewCell

Question

I have a UITextView in a custom UITableViewCell. The textview works properly (scrolls, shows text, etc.) but I need the users to be able to tap the table cell and go to another screen. Right now, if you tap the edges of the table cell (i.e. outside the UItextView) the next view is properly called. But clearly inside the uitextview the touches are being captured and not forwarded to the table cell.

I found a post that talked about subclassing UITextView to forward the touches. I tried that without luck. The implementation is below. I'm wondering if maybe a) the super of my textview isn't the uitableviewcell and thus I need to pass the touch some other way or b) If the super is the uitableviewcell if I need to pass something else? Any help would be much appreciated.

#import "ScrollableTextView.h"

@implementation ScrollableTextView

- (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (parentScrollView) {
        [parentScrollView touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event];
    }
    [super touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event];
}

- (void)touchesCancelled:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (parentScrollView) {
        [parentScrollView touchesCancelled:touches withEvent:event];
    }
    [super touchesCancelled:touches withEvent:event];
}

- (void)touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (parentScrollView) {
        [parentScrollView touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
    }
    [super touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
}

- (void)touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    if (parentScrollView) {
        [parentScrollView touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event];
    }
    [super touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event];
}

- (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder {
    return YES;
}

@end

Answer 1

Try [theTextView setUserInteractionEnabled:NO]; If the user needs to be able to edit the contents of the TextView, then you might have a design problem here.

Swift 3 : theTextView.isUserInteractionEnabled = false

Storyboard : tick the "User Interaction Enabled" checkbox.

Answer 2

I know that this question has been asked 5 years ago, but the behaviour is still very much needed for some app to have a clickable Cell with UIDataDetectors.

So here's the UITextView subclass I made up to fit this particular behaviour in a UITableView

-(id) initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame {
    self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
    if (self) {
        self.delegate = self;
    }
    return self;
}

- (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder {
    return NO;
}

- (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    UIView *obj = self;

    do {
        obj = obj.superview;
    } while (![obj isKindOfClass:[UITableViewCell class]]);
    UITableViewCell *cell = (UITableViewCell*)obj;

    do {
        obj = obj.superview;
    } while (![obj isKindOfClass:[UITableView class]]);
    UITableView *tableView = (UITableView*)obj;

    NSIndexPath *indePath = [tableView indexPathForCell:cell];
    [[tableView delegate] tableView:tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:indePath];
}

- (BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldInteractWithURL:(NSURL *)URL inRange:(NSRange)characterRange {
    return YES;
}

You can modify this to fit your needs...

Hope it helps someone.