NSRange from Swift Range?

Question

Swift String ranges and NSString ranges are not "compatible". For example, an emoji like 😄 counts as one Swift character, but as two NSString characters (a so-called UTF-16 surrogate pair).

Therefore your suggested solution will produce unexpected results if the string contains such characters. Example:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let textRange = text.startIndex..<text.endIndex
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)

text.enumerateSubstringsInRange(textRange, options: NSStringEnumerationOptions.ByWords, { (substring, substringRange, enclosingRange, stop) -> () in
    let start = distance(text.startIndex, substringRange.startIndex)
    let length = distance(substringRange.startIndex, substringRange.endIndex)
    let range = NSMakeRange(start, length)

    if (substring == "saying") {
        attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: NSColor.redColor(), range: range)
    }
})
println(attributedString)

Output:

😄😄😄Long paragra{
}ph say{
    NSColor = "NSCalibratedRGBColorSpace 1 0 0 1";
}ing!{
}

As you see, "ph say" has been marked with the attribute, not "saying".

Since NS(Mutable)AttributedString ultimately requires an NSString and an NSRange, it is actually better to convert the given string to NSString first. Then the substringRange is an NSRange and you don't have to convert the ranges anymore:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let nsText = text as NSString
let textRange = NSMakeRange(0, nsText.length)
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: nsText)

nsText.enumerateSubstringsInRange(textRange, options: NSStringEnumerationOptions.ByWords, { (substring, substringRange, enclosingRange, stop) -> () in

    if (substring == "saying") {
        attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: NSColor.redColor(), range: substringRange)
    }
})
println(attributedString)

Output:

😄😄😄Long paragraph {
}saying{
    NSColor = "NSCalibratedRGBColorSpace 1 0 0 1";
}!{
}

Update for Swift 2:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let nsText = text as NSString
let textRange = NSMakeRange(0, nsText.length)
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)

nsText.enumerateSubstringsInRange(textRange, options: .ByWords, usingBlock: {
    (substring, substringRange, _, _) in

    if (substring == "saying") {
        attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: NSColor.redColor(), range: substringRange)
    }
})
print(attributedString)

Update for Swift 3:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let nsText = text as NSString
let textRange = NSMakeRange(0, nsText.length)
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)

nsText.enumerateSubstrings(in: textRange, options: .byWords, using: {
    (substring, substringRange, _, _) in

    if (substring == "saying") {
        attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: NSColor.red, range: substringRange)
    }
})
print(attributedString)

Update for Swift 4:

As of Swift 4 (Xcode 9), the Swift standard library provides method to convert between Range<String.Index> and NSRange. Converting to NSString is no longer necessary:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)

text.enumerateSubstrings(in: text.startIndex..<text.endIndex, options: .byWords) {
    (substring, substringRange, _, _) in
    if substring == "saying" {
        attributedString.addAttribute(.foregroundColor, value: NSColor.red,
                                      range: NSRange(substringRange, in: text))
    }
}
print(attributedString)

Here substringRange is a Range<String.Index>, and that is converted to the corresponding NSRange with

NSRange(substringRange, in: text)

For cases like the one you described, I found this to work. It's relatively short and sweet:

 let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "follow the yellow brick road") //can essentially come from a textField.text as well (will need to unwrap though)
 let text = "follow the yellow brick road"
 let str = NSString(string: text) 
 let theRange = str.rangeOfString("yellow")
 attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: UIColor.yellowColor(), range: theRange)

The answers are fine, but with Swift 4 you could simplify your code a bit:

let text = "Test string"
let substring = "string"

let substringRange = text.range(of: substring)!
let nsRange = NSRange(substringRange, in: text)

Be cautious, as the result of range function has to be unwrapped.

Possible Solution

Swift provides distance() which measures the distance between start and end that can be used to create an NSRange:

let text = "Long paragraph saying something goes here!"
let textRange = text.startIndex..<text.endIndex
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)

text.enumerateSubstringsInRange(textRange, options: NSStringEnumerationOptions.ByWords, { (substring, substringRange, enclosingRange, stop) -> () in
    let start = distance(text.startIndex, substringRange.startIndex)
    let length = distance(substringRange.startIndex, substringRange.endIndex)
    let range = NSMakeRange(start, length)

//    println("word: \(substring) - \(d1) to \(d2)")

        if (substring == "saying") {
            attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: NSColor.redColor(), range: range)
        }
})

For me this works perfectly:

let font = UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 12, weight: .medium)
let text = "text"
let attString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "exemple text :)")

attString.addAttributes([.font: font], range:(attString.string as NSString).range(of: text))

label.attributedText = attString

Swift 4:

Sure, I know that Swift 4 has an extension for NSRange already

public init<R, S>(_ region: R, in target: S) where R : RangeExpression,
    S : StringProtocol, 
    R.Bound == String.Index, S.Index == String.Index

I know in most cases this init is enough. See its usage:

let string = "Many animals here: 🐶🦇🐱 !!!"

if let range = string.range(of: "🐶🦇🐱"){
     print((string as NSString).substring(with: NSRange(range, in: string))) //  "🐶🦇🐱"
 }

But conversion can be done directly from Range< String.Index > to NSRange without Swift's String instance.

Instead of generic init usage which requires from you the target parameter as String and if you don't have target string at hand you can create conversion directly

extension NSRange {
    public init(_ range:Range<String.Index>) {
        self.init(location: range.lowerBound.encodedOffset,
              length: range.upperBound.encodedOffset -
                      range.lowerBound.encodedOffset) }
    }

or you can create the specialized extension for Range itself

extension Range where Bound == String.Index {
    var nsRange:NSRange {
    return NSRange(location: self.lowerBound.encodedOffset,
                     length: self.upperBound.encodedOffset -
                             self.lowerBound.encodedOffset)
    }
}

Usage:

let string = "Many animals here: 🐶🦇🐱 !!!"
if let range = string.range(of: "🐶🦇🐱"){
    print((string as NSString).substring(with: NSRange(range))) //  "🐶🦇🐱"
}

or

if let nsrange = string.range(of: "🐶🦇🐱")?.nsRange{
    print((string as NSString).substring(with: nsrange)) //  "🐶🦇🐱"
}

Swift 5:

Due to the migration of Swift strings to UTF-8 encoding by default, the usage of encodedOffset is considered as deprecated and Range cannot be converted to NSRange without an instance of String itself, because in order to calculate the offset we need the source string which is encoded in UTF-8 and it should be converted to UTF-16 before calculating offset. So best approach, for now, is to use generic init.

Swift 4

I think, there are two ways.

1. NSRange(range, in: )

2. NSRange(location:, length: )

Sample code:

let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "Sample Text 12345", attributes: [.font : UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 15.0)])

// NSRange(range, in: )
if let range = attributedString.string.range(of: "Sample")  {
    attributedString.addAttribute(.foregroundColor, value: UIColor.orange, range: NSRange(range, in: attributedString.string))
}

// NSRange(location: , length: )
if let range = attributedString.string.range(of: "12345") {
    attributedString.addAttribute(.foregroundColor, value: UIColor.green, range: NSRange(location: range.lowerBound.encodedOffset, length: range.upperBound.encodedOffset - range.lowerBound.encodedOffset))
}

Screen Shot: