What Happened to NSAttributedString in Swift 5? Bold Doesnt work?

Question

All the sample code i have comea cross with just does not work with bold tags anymore. This also include italic html tags.

I am using the code from hacking swift as string extension.

var htmlAttributedString: NSAttributedString? {
        if let attributedString = try? NSAttributedString(data: Data(self.utf8), options: [.documentType: NSAttributedString.DocumentType.html], documentAttributes: nil) {
            return attributedString
        }
        else {
            return nil
        }
    }
    
    var htmlString: String {
        return htmlAttributedString?.string ?? ""
    }

Then try

let string = "<b>sample</b>"
Text(string.htmlString)

The code looks about right. Just that the bold tag does not get rendered. Anyone know of a workaround? I tried the adding html style system hardcoding font trick but it did not work as well.

I tried the markdown alternative , no luck either (but this is a different topic).

Answer 1

Note that your htmlString property essentially converts the attributed string back to a plain text string. Accessing the NSAttributedString.string property gives you the plain text parts of the string back, without any attributes.

Since this string is to be displayed in a Text, you can use the Swift AttributedString API instead. Change the type of htmlAttributedString to AttributedString, and convert the NSAttributedString:

extension String {
    var htmlAttributedString: AttributedString {
        if let attributedString = try? NSAttributedString(data: Data(self.utf8), options: [.documentType: NSAttributedString.DocumentType.html], documentAttributes: nil) {
            return AttributedString(attributedString)
        }
        else {
            return ""
        }
    }
}

Then you can create the Text like this:

Text("<b>foo</b>bar".htmlAttributedString)

---

Side note: if you are working with markdown instead, you can directly create the Text using a string literal like this - no need for any AttributedStrings

Text("**foo** bar")

If your markdown string is not a literal, wrap it in a LocalizedStringKey:

Text(LocalizedStringKey(someMarkdown))