Delegating Outline View's Data Source To Separate Object - objective-c

Question

I want to be able to use a blue object box to delegate control over an NSOutlineView. The blue object box would be hooked up to my primary controller, so it'd just be a data source and control the content of the NSOutlineView.
The problem I'm having is that I have no control over the Channel Data Source. I'm simply calling a declared method with some test NSLog inside of it, and it doesn't get called. The outlet doesn't get instantiated.
Here's the connections of the blue object box (ChannelDataSource)
Here's the connections of File's Owner for my primary controller.
So you see, I want to do something like [dataSource callMyMethod]; with the final aim that I have control over the contents for the NSOutlineView.
Any ideas?
EDIT
The application is structured whereby my primarily app delegate looks like this:
#implementation MyAppDelegate
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)aNotification
{
// Insert code here to initialize your application
controller = [[MainController alloc] init];
[controller showWindow];
}
#end
Then in the MainController I have something along the following lines:
#implementation MainController
-(id)init {
self = [super init];
if (self) {
// loads of random stuff
[dataSource myMethod];
}
return self;
}
So "Channel Data Source" blue object box is dataSource. At this point in the application life cycle, it's null, which isn't what I was expecting. At the same time, it's still a bit of black magic to me. If you have a blue object box, at what point is it instantiated? Obviously this isn't hooked up correctly though.
EDIT EDIT
Further to my points above, and trying to fix the problem, is this actually a good way to go about it? I'm looking at this thinking it's not meeting a decent MVC architecture, because ultimately the blue object box's owning class is storing and managing the data. Is there a better way to go about managing what's in your NSOutlineView?
EDIT EDIT EDIT
So I have my app delegate, which is strangely a class all by itself that instantiates the main controller. Don't ask me why I did this, it was very early code. So my app delegate (root entry point) has this:
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)aNotification
{
// Insert code here to initialize your application
controller = [[MyController alloc] initWithWindowNibName:#"MainWindow"];
[controller showWindow:nil]; // this doesn't open the window
[controller loadWindow]; // this does open the window
}
And the declaration of the controller:
#interface MyController : NSWindowController
Which contains the following method declaration in it:
-(void)windowDidLoad {
[dataSource insertChannel:#"test" forServer:#"test2"];
}
I have a breakpoint in windowDidLoad and it definitely doesn't get called.
Ideas?

Answer 1

There's still a few things you didn't clarify, but I can do some guessing. First, I'm assuming that MainController is a subclass of NSWindowController. If so, you should be using initWithWindowNibName: instead of just init, otherwise how would the controller know what window to show when you address showWindow: to it? Second, even if you do that, and change your init method to initWithWindowNibNamed:, what your wrote won't work, because the init is too early in the process to see your outlet, datasource. If you just log dataSource it will come up null. A better place to put that code would be in windowDidLoad, as everything will have been set up by then (this will be called after showWindow:). So, in my little test project, this is what I did.
In the app delegate:
- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)aNotification {
self.cont = [[Controller alloc] initWithWindowNibName:#"Window"];
[self.cont showWindow:nil];
}
In the Controller.M I have this:
- (void)windowDidLoad {
NSLog(#"%#",self.dataSource);
[self.dataSource testMethod];
}
In IB, in the Window.xib file, I set the class of the file's owner to Controller, and the class of the blue cube to ChannelDataSource. EVerything was hooked up the same way you showed in your post.