Convert HTML to NSAttributedString in iOS

In iOS 7, UIKit added an initWithData:options:documentAttributes:error: method which can initialize an NSAttributedString using HTML, eg:

[[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithData:[htmlString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] 
                                 options:@{NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute: NSHTMLTextDocumentType,
                                           NSCharacterEncodingDocumentAttribute: @(NSUTF8StringEncoding)} 
                      documentAttributes:nil error:nil];

In Swift:

let htmlData = NSString(string: details).data(using: String.Encoding.unicode.rawValue)
let options = [NSAttributedString.DocumentReadingOptionKey.documentType:
        NSAttributedString.DocumentType.html]
let attributedString = try? NSMutableAttributedString(data: htmlData ?? Data(),
                                                          options: options,
                                                          documentAttributes: nil)

Creating an NSAttributedString from HTML must be done on the main thread!

Update: It turns out that NSAttributedString HTML rendering depends on WebKit under the hood, and must be run on the main thread or it will occasionally crash the app with a SIGTRAP.

New Relic crash log:

Below is an updated thread-safe Swift 2 String extension:

extension String {
    func attributedStringFromHTML(completionBlock:NSAttributedString? ->()) {
        guard let data = dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding) else {
            print("Unable to decode data from html string: \(self)")
            return completionBlock(nil)
        }

        let options = [NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute : NSHTMLTextDocumentType,
                   NSCharacterEncodingDocumentAttribute: NSNumber(unsignedInteger:NSUTF8StringEncoding)]

        dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
            if let attributedString = try? NSAttributedString(data: data, options: options, documentAttributes: nil) {
                completionBlock(attributedString)
            } else {
                print("Unable to create attributed string from html string: \(self)")
                completionBlock(nil)
            }
        }
    }
}

Usage:

let html = "<center>Here is some <b>HTML</b></center>"
html.attributedStringFromHTML { attString in
    self.bodyLabel.attributedText = attString
}

Output:

There is a work-in-progress open source addition to NSAttributedString by Oliver Drobnik at Github. It uses NSScanner for HTML parsing.