Question

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

I have tried the code snippet below, but without luck:

#define ACCEPTABLE_CHARECTERS @" ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789_."

- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string
{
         NSCharacterSet *acceptedInput = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:ACCEPTABLE_CHARECTERS];
        if (![[string componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:acceptedInput] count] > 1){
            NSLog(@"not allowed");
            return NO;
        }
        else{
            return YES;
        }
}

Answer 1

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.