Rich ReactNative TextInput - react-native

Question

Any way to create a "rich" TextInput in React Native? Maybe not a full blown wysiwyg, but maybe just change the text color of various pieces of text; like the #mention feature on Twitter or Facebook.

Answer 1

Solution is that you can use <Text> elements as children in a <TextInput> like this:
<TextInput>
whoa no way <Text style={{color:'red'}}>rawr</Text>
</TextInput>

Answer 2

This question was asked a while ago but I think my answer can help other people looking for how to color the #mention part of a string. I am not sure if the way I did it is clean or the "react" way but here is how I did it:
I take the inputed string and split it with an empty space as the separator. I then loop through the array and if the current item matches the pattern of #mention/#user, it is replaced with the Text tag with the styles applied; else return the item. At the end, I render inputText array (contains strings and jsx elements)inside the TextInput element. Hope this helps!
render() {
let inputText = this.state.content;
if (inputText){
inputText = inputText.split(/(\s)/g).map((item, i) => {
if (/#[a-zA-Z0-9]+/g.test(item)){
return <Text key={i} style={{color: 'green'}}>{item}</Text>;
}
return item;
})
return <TextInput>{inputText}</TextInput>

Answer 3

Have a look at the TokenizedTextExample from the react-native docs. I think that'll get you close to what you're looking to do. The relevant code follows:
class TokenizedTextExample extends React.Component {
state: any;
constructor(props) {
super(props);
this.state = {text: 'Hello #World'};
}
render() {
//define delimiter
let delimiter = /\s+/;
//split string
let _text = this.state.text;
let token, index, parts = [];
while (_text) {
delimiter.lastIndex = 0;
token = delimiter.exec(_text);
if (token === null) {
break;
}
index = token.index;
if (token[0].length === 0) {
index = 1;
}
parts.push(_text.substr(0, index));
parts.push(token[0]);
index = index + token[0].length;
_text = _text.slice(index);
}
parts.push(_text);
//highlight hashtags
parts = parts.map((text) => {
if (/^#/.test(text)) {
return <Text key={text} style={styles.hashtag}>{text}</Text>;
} else {
return text;
}
});
return (
<View>
<TextInput
multiline={true}
style={styles.multiline}
onChangeText={(text) => {
this.setState({text});
}}>
<Text>{parts}</Text>
</TextInput>
</View>
);
}
}

Answer 4

You will have to use regex in order to achieve that behaviour. Someone has already created package for that have a look at react-native-parsed-text
This library allows you to parse a text and extract parts using a RegExp or predefined patterns. Currently there are 3 predefined types: url, phone and email.
Example from their github
<ParsedText
style={styles.text}
parse={
[
{type: 'url', style: styles.url, onPress: this.handleUrlPress},
{type: 'phone', style: styles.phone, onPress: this.handlePhonePress},
{type: 'email', style: styles.email, onPress: this.handleEmailPress},
{pattern: /Bob|David/, style: styles.name, onPress: this.handleNamePress},
{pattern: /\[(#[^:]+):([^\]]+)\]/i, style: styles.username, onPress: this.handleNamePress, renderText: this.renderText},
{pattern: /42/, style: styles.magicNumber},
{pattern: /#(\w+)/, style: styles.hashTag},
]
}
>
Hello this is an example of the ParsedText, links like http://www.google.com or http://www.facebook.com are clickable and phone number 444-555-6666 can call too.
But you can also do more with this package, for example Bob will change style and David too. foo#gmail.com
And the magic number is 42!
#react #react-native
</ParsedText>