Question

I have a tableView that contains a few UITextView controls. When the user taps on one of these the text inside should be selected so that any keyboard input immediately replaces the original content.

I cannot get the text inside a UITextView selected using this code:

txtQuantity.SelectAll (new NSObject(NSObjectFlag.Empty));

as this code only shows the menu “Select | Select All’ without the text being actually selected.

Has someone gotten this to work?

EDIT:
The code below select the text inside the txtQuantity control, BUT ONLY IF the UIAlert is show first! Why is this?

public override void ViewDidLoad ()
        {
            base.ViewDidLoad ();

            txtQuantity.TouchDown += txtQuantityHandleTouchDown;

            txtQuantity.EditingDidBegin += delegate {

                txtQuantity.ExclusiveTouch=true;
                UIAlertView uv = new UIAlertView("","OK",null,"OK",null);
                uv.Show ();
            };

        }

        void txtQuantityHandleTouchDown (object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            txtQuantity.SelectAll (this);
            txtQuantity.Selected = true;

        }

If all code within the txtQuality.EditingBegin delegate is commented out, the HandleTouchDown event does not fire.

Answer 1

I am not sure that this is what you are going for but I put together a quick sample.

The problem I was having is with calling SelectAll in EditingDidBegin. I had to make a call to BeginInvokeOnMainThread to get the select to work. I am not sure if it is a problem with the event not happening on the main thread or you simply need to make an async call on the main thread.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

using MonoTouch.Foundation;
using MonoTouch.UIKit;

namespace SelectText
{
    [Register ("AppDelegate")]
    public partial class AppDelegate : UIApplicationDelegate
    {
        // class-level declarations
        UIWindow window;

        public override bool FinishedLaunching (UIApplication app, NSDictionary options)
        {
            // create a new window instance based on the screen size
            window = new UIWindow (UIScreen.MainScreen.Bounds);

            window.RootViewController = new MyTableViewController ();

            // make the window visible
            window.MakeKeyAndVisible ();

            return true;
        }
    }

    public class MyTableViewController : UITableViewController
    {
        public override void LoadView ()
        {
            base.LoadView ();
            this.TableView.DataSource = new TableViewDataSource ();
        }
        private class TableViewDataSource : UITableViewDataSource
        {
            private class EditCell : UITableViewCell
            {
                UITextField _field;

                public EditCell () : base (UITableViewCellStyle.Default, "mycell")
                {
                    _field = new UITextField (this.Bounds);
                    _field.AutoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizing.All;
                    _field.BackgroundColor = UIColor.Clear;
                    _field.ShouldReturn = delegate {
                        _field.ResignFirstResponder ();

                        return true;
                    };

                    _field.EditingDidBegin += delegate {
                        this.BeginInvokeOnMainThread ( delegate {
                            _field.SelectAll (this);
                        });
                    };

                    _field.Text = "Some Text";
                    this.Add (_field);
                }

                public override void LayoutSubviews ()
                {
                    base.LayoutSubviews ();
                    _field.Frame = this.Bounds;
                }


            }

            #region implemented abstract members of UITableViewDataSource           
            public override int RowsInSection (UITableView tableView, int section)
            {
                return 2;
            }           

            public override UITableViewCell GetCell (UITableView tableView, NSIndexPath indexPath)
            {
                UITableViewCell cell = tableView.DequeueReusableCell ("mycell");

                if (cell == null)
                {
                    cell = new EditCell ();
                }

                cell.SelectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyle.None;

                return cell;
            }           
            #endregion
        }
    }
}