While there are more sophisticated routines and objects for parsing HTML (note the OmniFrameworks ), you can do simple parsing in an NSTextView with the help of NSAttributedString:

textView textStorage] setAttributedString:[[[[[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithHTML:[NSData dataWithBytes:[theString cString] length:[theString length]] documentAttributes:nil] autorelease]];

(Thanks to Andreas Monitzer for the code snippet!)

Note that this does not automatically make URLs clickable. We have some sample code for a ClickableUrlInTextView, too though.

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It’s also worth noting that this seems to start loading any graphics referenced by tags in a background thread, but they don’t seem to show up unless the text view is repeatedly resized or otherwise refreshed. (See the SmallSockets 0.4.0 test application) Anyone know how to make this happen automatically?

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does calling the view’s display or invalidateRectInWhateverThatMethodIsCalled method work?

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Ok, I just want to be clear. To the above code, you need to add something like

NSURL *websiteURL;

websiteURL = NSURL alloc] initWithString:[textField stringValue; theString = [[NSString alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:websiteURL];

Then everything works fine. This does the job of converting the textField string to a URL and then using this URL to connect to the internet and download the HTML into the string theString.

I tried the following code…

NSURL *websiteURL; [websiteURL URLWithString:[textField stringValue]]; [theString stringWithContentsOfURL:websiteURL];

But this does not work. Project Builder tells me that NSString does not respond to stringWithContentsOfURL and NSURL does not respond to URLWithString. Why doesn’t the second code work?

Also, using the above code (which works), typing in “http://www.apple.com” works, but typing in “www.apple.com” does not. How do you add the ability of the textField to automatically append “http://” to the address the user types in if the user omits it? –AlexanderD

Prepend, you mean. First, you might want to check the string to see if it is prefixed with “http://”; after that, you might try looking at the NSURL methods. I don’t know which method refers to the “http://” bit specifically, but it’s a start. – RobRix

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Shouldn’t that be:

NSURL *websiteURL = [NSURL urlWithString: [textField stringValue]]; [theString stringWithContentsOfURL:websiteURL];