Get selection (highlighted text) string from NSTextView Objective-C - objective-c

Question

How can I get the selected text's string from a NSTextView as an NSString?
Your help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

An NSText can have more than only one selection. Check it out with TextEditapp: select a string with the mouse while pressing CMD. So you can select as many strings as you want. Therefore I think, a more common solution is to use:
NSArray *ranges = [myTextView selectedRanges];
and then extract the strings one by one.

Answer 2

Since NSTextView is a subclass of NSText, you can use NSText instance methods to figure out the selected string like so:
NSString *selected = [[myTextView string]
substringWithRange:[myTextView selectedRange]];

Answer 3

Swift 5, handling multiple selections of NSTextView
based on #vauxhall's answer
extension NSTextView {
var selectedText: String {
var text = ""
for case let range as NSRange in self.selectedRanges {
text.append(string[range]+"\n")
}
text = String(text.dropLast())
return text
}
}
extension String {
subscript (_ range: NSRange) -> Self {
.init(self[index(startIndex, offsetBy: range.lowerBound) ..< index(startIndex, offsetBy: range.upperBound)])
}
}

Answer 4

Swift
extension NSTextView {
var selectedText: String {
string[selectedRange()]
}
}
extension String {
subscript (_ range: NSRange) -> Self {
.init(self[index(startIndex, offsetBy: range.lowerBound) ..< index(startIndex, offsetBy: range.upperBound)])
}
}
Usage
let textView = NSTextView()
print(textView.selectedText)