YOU SHOULD NOT DO THIS but you know that little dictionary...

YOU SHOULD NOT DO THIS but you know that little dictionary word lookup feature in iOS? It’s called UIReferenceLibraryViewController, you can use it and its public, but you can also strip mine it for the dictionary definitions.

Don't do it though since:
- You don’t have the rights to use the Oxford dictionary
- This is super undocumented and will probably get you rejected from App Review
- This could break at any time if they decide to lock this down

...but it is technically possible. Don’t.

The iOS dictionary lookup view for the word “Dash”

A custom DictionaryService class that creates the view controller, grabs its definitions, and then destroys the VC. I think, in general, we should destroy VCs more often but that’s beside the point.

Printing out the values:
- Term: “Dash”
- Localized dictionary name: "Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus”
- Definition is an attributed string too long to fit in here, but it’s the definition with attributes to render it properly.
- Long definition is a super long string containing the HTML required to render a definition.

Like 20 March at 12:55 | Open on hachyderm.io