Cocoa app without MainMenu.xib? - objective-c

Question

It's been asked before, but no clear (current) answer seems to be out there.. Is it actually possible to build a Cocoa app, WITH a Main Menu, exclusively from code (no MainMenu.xib, etc.) in such a way that it will still pass scrutiny when submitted to the app store? If so, what is the magic incantation(s) to get this to work?
Extra credit if someone can point me to a tutorial or document that's not from 2002 and works on mavericks..

Answer 1

Well, it certainly used to be possible.
I’d start by looking in main.m, and replace NSApplicationMain() with NSApplicationLoad(), so you get an NSApplication object.
Then you can create an NSMenu using standard NSMenu methods (-addItem:, etc), and then call
[NSApplication sharedApplication].mainMenu = myMenu;
Then, you know, make an NSWindow, show that, etc.
Of course, there are a lot of menu items that Apple sets up for you when you launch, that you might not get when you do this. You’d have to add them by hand if so.
This really isn’t something I recommend, but there you go.

Answer 2

http://blog.moostep.com/xamarin-mac-helloworld-application-without-xib/
http://blog.moostep.com/creating-menu-for-xamarin-mac-app-using-csharp/
I don't know enough about Mac App Store to know if this will pass muster. I assume you can translate it from C# to Objective-C. It doesn't use any special Mono or Xamarin features.
Read the blog articles for some background. Meanwhile, I'll paste my versions of main.cs and AppDelegate.cs here:
main.cs:
using System;
using MonoMac.AppKit;
namespace XibFreeCocoaApp
{
public class XibFreeCocoaApp
{
static void Main (string[] args)
{
NSApplication.Init ();
var application = NSApplication.SharedApplication;
application.Delegate = new AppDelegate();
application.Run ();
}
}
}
AppDelegate.cs:
using System;
using System.Drawing;
using MonoMac.AppKit;
using MonoMac.Foundation;
namespace XibFreeCocoaApp
{
public class AppDelegate : NSApplicationDelegate
{
public override void FinishedLaunching (MonoMac.Foundation.NSObject notification)
{
CreateMenu (NSProcessInfo.ProcessInfo.ProcessName);
var window = new NSWindow (
new RectangleF (0, 0, 400, 300),
NSWindowStyle.Titled,
NSBackingStore.Buffered,
false) {
Title = "Xib Free Cocoa App with Menu"
};
window.CascadeTopLeftFromPoint (new PointF (20, 20));
window.MakeKeyAndOrderFront(null);
}
void CreateMenu (string appName)
{
var mainMenu = new NSMenu();
var appMenuItem = new NSMenuItem ();
mainMenu.AddItem (appMenuItem);
var appMenu = new NSMenu ();
var quitMenuItem = new NSMenuItem (String.Format ("Quit {0}", appName), "q", delegate {
NSApplication.SharedApplication.Terminate(mainMenu);
});
appMenu.AddItem (quitMenuItem);
appMenuItem.Submenu = appMenu;
NSApplication.SharedApplication.MainMenu = mainMenu;
}
}
}

Answer 3

Be aware that the code above will not change the title of menu items that have a submenu - to do this you need to assign title to the Submenu as well like so:
NSMenuItem someMenuItem = new NSMenuItem("Title 1");
NSMenu someMenuItemSubMenu = new NSMenu();
someMenuItemSubMenu.Title = "Title 2";
someMenuItem.Submenu = someMenuItemSubMenu;
The displayed tile in this case will be "Title 2", not "Title 1" (actually "Title 1" will be completely ignored).