How to detect a URL in a String using NSDataDetector

Swift version: 5.1

Paul Hudson @twostraws May 28th 2019

The NSDataDetector class makes it easy to detect URLs inside a string using just a few lines of code. This example loops through all URLs in a string, printing each one out:

let input = "This is a test with the URL https://www.hackingwithswift.com to be detected."
let detector = try! NSDataDetector(types: NSTextCheckingResult.CheckingType.link.rawValue)
let matches = detector.matches(in: input, options: [], range: NSRange(location: 0, length: input.utf16.count))

for match in matches {
    guard let range = Range(match.range, in: input) else { continue }
    let url = input[range]
    print(url)
}

Available from iOS 4.0