Detect backspace in empty UITextField

Question

Is there any way to detect when the Backspace/Delete key is pressed in the iPhone keyboard on a UITextField that is empty? I want to know when Backspace is pressed only if the UITextField is empty.

---

Based on the suggestion from @Alex Reynolds in a comment, I've added the following code while creating my text field:

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
          selector:@selector(handleTextFieldChanged:)
              name:UITextFieldTextDidChangeNotification
            object:searchTextField];

This notification is received (handleTextFieldChanged function is called), but still not when I press the Backspace key in an empty field. Any ideas?

---

There seems to be some confusion around this question. I want to receive a notification when the Backspace key is pressed. That's it. But the solution must also work when the UITextField is already empty.

Answer 1

:) just for the title "Detect backspace", where I use UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad.

I also meet the same question tonight, and following is my code to find it out:

- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField 
        shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range 
        replacementString:(NSString *)string
{
    NSLog([NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", [string length]]);
}

Because with UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad, user can only input Number or backspace, so when the length of string is 0, it must be backspace key.

Hope the above will do some help.

Answer 2

To Keep it Simple here is the only condition u need to check

     if (range.length==1)

Answer 3

In UITextViewDelegate:

- (BOOL)               textView:(UITextView *)textView 
        shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range 
                replacementText:(NSString *)text
{
    if(text isEqualToString:@"");
    {
        NSLog(@"press backspace.");
    }
}

it works ok for me.

update for Chinese simplified pinyin and Chinese handwriting input:

- (BOOL)               textView:(UITextView *)textView 
        shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range 
                replacementText:(NSString *)text
{
    if (range.length > 0 && [text isEqualToString:@""]) {
        NSLog(@"press Backspace.");
    }
    return YES;
}

base on the document says:

"If the user presses the deleteKey, the length of the range is 1 and an empty string object replaces that single character."

Answer 4

Subclassing UITextField did not work for me on iOS 8.3, deleteBackward was never called.

Here is the solution I used, works on all iOS 8 versions and should work on other iOS versions as well

for textField in textFields {
            textField.text = " "
}

func textField(textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersInRange range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
        if string == "" && textField.text == " "   {
            // Do stuff here
            return false
        }
        return true
}

Answer 5

Something like this:

- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField 
        shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range 
        replacementString:(NSString *)string       
{  
    if (![text hash] && ![textField.text length])  
        [self backspaceInEmptyTextField];  
}

of course the hash is for one character string.

Answer 6

Swift implementation:

import UIKit

protocol PinTexFieldDelegate : UITextFieldDelegate {
    func didPressBackspace(textField : PinTextField)
}

class PinTextField: UITextField {

    override func deleteBackward() {
        super.deleteBackward()

        // If conforming to our extension protocol
        if let pinDelegate = self.delegate as? PinTexFieldDelegate {
            pinDelegate.didPressBackspace(self)
        }
    }
}