iOS: How to send key to UITextField?

Question

I have implemented a custom keyboard view in an iOS application. I have several UITextFields that use this keyboard. Some of these UITextFields have delegates that override shouldChangeCharactersInRange. However if my keyboard just sets the text value in the text field, the shouldChangeCharactersInRange message is not sent. What I think I need is to actually do something like SendKey and send the key code to the UITextField.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

As I note in my answer here, the UITextField conforms to the UITextInput protocol. So you call its methods:

[textField replaceRange:textField.selectedTextRange withText:text];

Of interest: "" will perform a backspace and, of course, " " will do a space.

This should call the shouldChangeCharactersInRange method automatically. If not, you'd have to do that yourself.

You definitely need to do this if you are going to create a custom keyboard on iOS.