How to generate Keyboard key press and release events for an IOS application using Swift

Question

Am new to IOS development and i want to send some soft keyboard key press and release events from framework to Application using the Swift 2.3 or 3.0 version.

Thanks for any help

Answer 1

If I understood your question correct, you are asking for how to detect when you are typing keys. There are textField delegate methods to do this work for you.

`// UITextField Delegates
    func textFieldDidBeginEditing(_ textField: UITextField) {
    }
    func textFieldDidEndEditing(_ textField: UITextField) {
    }
    func textFieldShouldBeginEditing(_ textField: UITextField) -> Bool {
        return true;
    }
    func textFieldShouldClear(_ textField: UITextField) -> Bool {
        return true;
    }
    func textFieldShouldEndEditing(_ textField: UITextField) -> Bool {
        return true;
    }
    func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
        return true;
    }
    func textFieldShouldReturn(_ textField: UITextField) -> Bool {
        textField.resignFirstResponder();
        return true;
    }`

Update:

t's not possible to get the touch events directly from the virtual keyboard. However, you could use a UITextField that you place offscreen, so that it's not visible and call becomeFirstResponder to show the keyboard. Then, you could implement the delegate method textView:shouldChangeTextInRange: to be notified whenever a key is pressed.

A cleaner possibility would be to write a custom UIControl that implements the UIKeyInput protocol. You would only need to provide implementations for insertText:, deleteBackward and hasText (for this one, you can simply always return YES). To make the keyboard visible, you would again have to call becomeFirstResponder for your custom control.

Both of these methods have in common that you only will be notified when the key is released (so that text is entered), not when the touch actually begins. As I said, it's not possible to get the tochesBegan event directly. If you need that, you would probably have to implement your own onscreen keyboard.

Answer 2

Just add a target for editing notification event like this:

// Obj-C
[textObject addTarget:self action:@selector(editingChanged:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventEditingChanged];

- (void)editingChanged:(id)object {
    // Do your code here
}

// Swift
textObject.addTarget(self, action: #selector(self.editingChanged(textObject:)), for: .editingChanged)

func editingChanged(textObject: AnyObject) {
    // Do your code here
}