How to Restrict Certain Characters in Uitextfield in Swift

How can I restrict special characters in UITextField except dot and underscores?

Try code block given below, it worked fine for me.

SWIFT 3.0

let ACCEPTABLE_CHARACTERS = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789_"

func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
    let cs = NSCharacterSet(charactersIn: ACCEPTABLE_CHARACTERS).inverted
    let filtered = string.components(separatedBy: cs).joined(separator: "")

    return (string == filtered)
}

Objective C

#define ACCEPTABLE_CHARACTERS @" ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789_."

- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string  {
      NSCharacterSet *cs = [[NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:ACCEPTABLE_CHARACTERS] invertedSet];

      NSString *filtered = [[string componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:cs] componentsJoinedByString:@""];

      return [string isEqualToString:filtered];
}

Hope it will work for you as well.

Restrict certain characters from certain UITextField

You can compare the textField with the one you want to restrict input to

 func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {

    if textField == self.firsNameTxf {

        return string.rangeOfCharacter(from: CharacterSet(charactersIn: "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ")) == nil }

    else {

         return true 
   }

}

Set the maximum character length of a UITextField in Swift

Your view controller should conform to UITextFieldDelegate, like below:
```
class MyViewController: UIViewController, UITextFieldDelegate {

}
```
Set the delegate of your textfield: myTextField.delegate = self

Implement the method in your view controller:

textField(_:shouldChangeCharactersInRange:replacementString:)

All together:

class MyViewController: UIViewController, UITextFieldDelegate  // Set delegate to class

@IBOutlet var mytextField: UITextField             //  textfield variable

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    mytextField.delegate = self                  // set delegate
}


func textField(textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersInRange range: NSRange,
                       replacementString string: String) -> Bool
{
    let maxLength = 4
    let currentString: NSString = textField.text
    let newString: NSString =  currentString.stringByReplacingCharactersInRange(range, withString: string)

    return newString.length <= maxLength
}

For Swift 4

func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
    let maxLength = 1
    let currentString: NSString = (textField.text ?? "") as NSString
    let newString: NSString =  currentString.replacingCharacters(in: range, with: string) as NSString

    return newString.length <= maxLength
}

For Swift 5

func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
    let maxLength = 1
    let currentString = (textField.text ?? "") as NSString
    let newString = currentString.replacingCharacters(in: range, with: string)

    return newString.count <= maxLength
}

Allowing only a specified set of characters to be entered into a given text field

func textField(textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersInRange range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
    var result = true

    if mytextField == numberField {
        if count(string) > 0 {
            let disallowedCharacterSet = NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: "0123456789.-").invertedSet
            let replacementStringIsLegal = string.rangeOfCharacterFromSet(disallowedCharacterSet) == nil
            result = replacementStringIsLegal
        }
    }

    return result
}

How to program an iOS text field that takes only numeric input with a maximum length

Restrict the number of characters in UITextField

Set textField delegates to respective class (in my case self is ViewController)

nameField.delegate = self
keyField.delegate = self

Then you can restrict characters by

extension ViewController : UITextFieldDelegate {

    func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {

        switch textField {
        case nameField:
            if ((textField.text?.length)! + (string.length - range.length)) > 12 {
                return false
            }

        case keyField:
            if ((textField.text?.length)! + (string.length - range.length)) > 1 {
                return false
            }
        }
        return true 
    }
}

How to prevent specific characters from being typed in textfield?

You need to use UITextViewDelegate for that. Catch user's input in one of the delegate methods, and handle it as you wish.

Here is the Apple Reference for it:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UITextViewDelegate_Protocol/#//apple_ref/occ/intfm/UITextViewDelegate/textView:shouldChangeTextInRange:replacementText:

EDIT:

You might need to use this function.

func textField(textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersInRange range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
    inputString = inputString.stringByReplacingCharactersInRange(range, withString: string)

It really depends on how you want to handle "not allowing" specific chars.

how to restrict special characters in UITextField in iPad?

Implement textField:shouldChangeCharactersInRange:replacementString: in the delegate, check the replacement string for special characters, and disallow the replacement if you detect any.

The easiest way to check for non-alphanumerics is as follows:

if ([replacementString rangeOfCharacterFromSet:[[NSCharacterSet alphanumericCharacterSet] invertedSet]].location != NSNotFound) {
    // There are non-alphanumeric characters in the replacement string
}