SwiftUI - How to create TextField that only accepts numbers

Question

I'm new to SwiftUI and iOS, and I'm trying to create an input field that will only accept numbers.

 TextField("Total number of people", text: $numOfPeople)

The TextField currently allows alphabetic characters, how do I make it so that the user can only input numbers?

Answer 1

Although showing a number pad is a good first step, it does not actually prevent bad data from being entered:

1. The user can paste the non-numeric text into the TextField
2. iPad users will still get a full keyboard
3. Anyone with a Bluetooth keyboard attached can type anything

What you really want to do is sanitize the input, like this:

import SwiftUI
import Combine

struct StackOverflowTests: View {
    @State private var numOfPeople = "0"

    var body: some View {
        TextField("Total number of people", text: $numOfPeople)
            .keyboardType(.numberPad)
            .onReceive(Just(numOfPeople)) { newValue in
                let filtered = newValue.filter { "0123456789".contains($0) }
                if filtered != newValue {
                    self.numOfPeople = filtered
                }
            }
    }
}

Whenever numOfPeople changes, the non-numeric values are filtered out, and the filtered value is compared to see if numOfPeople should be updated a second time, overwriting the bad input with the filtered input.

Note that the Just publisher requires that you import Combine.

EDIT:

To explain the Just publisher, consider the following conceptual outline of what occurs when you change the value in the TextField:

1. Because TextField takes a Binding to a String when the contents of the field are changed, it also writes that change back to the @State variable.
2. When a variable marked @State changes, SwiftUI recomputes the body property of the view.
3. During the body computation, a Just publisher is created. Combine has a lot of different publishers to emit values over time, but the Just publisher takes "just" a single value (the new value of numberOfPeople) and emits it when asked.
4. The onReceive method makes a View a subscriber to a publisher, in this case, the Just publisher we just created. Once subscribed, it immediately asks for any available values from the publisher, of which there is only one, the new value of numberOfPeople.
5. When the onReceive subscriber receives a value, it executes the specified closure. Our closure can end in one of two ways. If the text is already numeric only, then it does nothing. If the filtered text is different, it is written to the @State variable, which begins the loop again, but this time the closure will execute without modifying any properties.

Check out Using Combine for more info.

Answer 2

tl;dr

Checkout John M's solution for a much better way.

---

One way to do it is that you can set the type of keyboard on the TextField which will limit what people can type on.

TextField("Total number of people", text: $numOfPeople)
    .keyboardType(.numberPad)

Apple's documentation can be found here, and you can see a list of all supported keyboard types here.

However, this method is only a first step and is not ideal as the only solution:

1. iPad doesn't have a numberPad so this method won't work on an iPad.
2. If the user is using a hardware keyboard then this method won't work.
3. It does not check what the user has entered. A user could copy/paste a non-numeric value into the TextField.

You should sanitise the data that is entered and make sure that it is purely numeric.

For a solution that does that checkout John M's solution below. He does a great job explaining how to sanitise the data and how it works.