I'm having an extremely difficult time trying to access information from an object (e.g. an NSTextField) that is located on a NIB other than my "MainMenu.nib".
My current setup:
I have a MainMenu.xib that contains only a toolbar at the top and an NSView. I have four other .xib files containing custom NSViews and each of their File Owner's are assigned to a NSViewController subclass which I have created for each. My MainMenu.xib contains an object that is set to my WindowController subclass that takes care of swapping the fours views into the NSView on my MainMenu.xib. All of this works fantastic.
Where I have a problem:
I have another class that acts as the brains to my application which sends and receives data from an online server, all of the methods I have created rely on inputs from the user that are located on the individual .xibs that swap into my MainMenu.xib's NSview. Unfortunately I have no idea on how to grab the information from the NSTextFields, textViews, etc. that are located on my individual .xib files.
What I've tried:
I have tried setting the File Owner's of the four individual .xibs to my "brains" class and connecting outlets defined in my "brains".h, but when I call [textField stringValue] I receive a NULL response. I'm thinking this is because I'm creating multiple instances of my "brains" class but not totally sure.
Any help on accessing information from textFields from other nibs would be a great benefit, thanks in advance.
each of their File Owner's are
assigned to a NSViewController
subclass which I have created for each
I think the easiest way (not the best way) is that your brain contains all 4 NSViewController subclass and you leak the information of the UITextField out using the property and then you can access them
Related
I was an iOS programmer and recently switched over to making Cocoa apps for Mac. When creating a project in Xcode, it seems there are two options:
(1) Using the MainMenu.xib default, insert buttons and link to AppDelegate. I have tried creating an NSView class and linking to that with no success.
(2) Creating an NSViewController class and linking the view from MainMenu.xib and any buttons to that.
Which of these methods is better when creating larger applications, with multiple views and windows?
Edit: What would be the best way to start out if not connecting anything to AppDelegate? Create an NSWindowController class with an xib and connect its view to a NSViewController class?
I guess overall I am confused as to which class I start with and what elements (window, views, buttons) to connect to what class file.
You can create a window object in your MainMenu xib and create a reference to it in your AppDelegate class. You will be able access items in it. But this is good only for a little learning.
You should start with an NSWindowController. For a first try, don't make any view controllers yet. Use the xib file and build your first window in the subclass of NSWindowController.
In AppDelegate, create an instance of the new class and open it.
Once you have mastered that, you can define view controllers for parts (or all) of you window's view.
If you need sample code, let me know, but it's a good exercise to work it out.
I have one NSTableView nib that contains a number of cells that will be reused throughout 3 different NSViewControllers. The NSTableView and cells function in the same way and look similar but present different data in each of the different views.
Right now I can set the File's Owner to one of the NSViewController classes, but not all of them meaning I'd have to duplicate the nib 3 times. Given that I'm loading with initWithNibName:bundle I don't see any way to set the File's Owner first either.
How can I use one nib with multiple File's Owner for NSViewControllers?
Any ideas?
Have you tried simply NSViewController or a subclass of it that is an abstract superclass of your view controllers?
One subclass could even be sufficient if the differences between your instances can be managed with conditional logic in the subclass.
Either way, it sounds like you have some refactoring to do, but minimal.
I am an iOS developer not OSX but we also face this problem. In our case I would have used a UIView class(surely you will have NSView kind of class) and then added table on that class and made File's Owner of the table to that view class.
I can reuse this class whenever I want in any view controller by adding this view on that controller and changing its data set.
Assume you do not have a UIController to do the job. From inside the UIView .. how would you replace self with another UIView?
It's not very clear what you are trying to do from your question. UIController is not a class, for instance.
Ideally your app should be structured something like this:
UIViewController subclass
Controls a set of objects that are all on screen at one time. For example, any number of UITextFields, UIButtons, UIViews and UILabels.
has methods (IBActions and other delegate methods) which are triggered by user interaction with the controls and inputs.
has IBOutlets which allow it to manipulate what the user sees on screen. For instance an IBOutlet attached to a UILabel allows changing the text when a user presses a button.
UIView is only generally subclassed if you need custom drawing code, or some kind of custom control. Don't put application logic here if you can help it, and you can usually help it.
You can have multiple UIViewControllers but they usually function very independently. Often View Controllers don't maintain references for other view controllers. If they do it's loose couplings like the delegate pattern.
Bottom line: if you have two views controllers that need to communicate with each-other, you need to have a reference to one from the other. This usually occurs in the form of a property on one or both of the view controllers, and is connected either by interface builder or at run time when you create them.
You can add another subview using self.addSubview: you may also want to check self.bringSubviewToFront:
For more information, check the docs:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/uiview_class/uiview/uiview.html
The issue i am facing deals with multiple views, each needing to communicate with one another. I chose to use the File Owner for this, but can't seem to be able to access the already loaded instance of it from inside of views.
Each rectangle represents its own view
Activity will happen on "Some View", where user's event will cause Labels in top view to be updated
Event will not be triggers by a button click of anything like that. No outputs are set up to establish relationships between the views
No outlets are set up between the views
Outlets are setup however between top Views (with Labels) and File Owner (UIViewController).
Ultimately, i'd like to update label in view 1 from view 2.
Then the bar moves, I want labels to change
At this time, i believe a reasonable solution would be to ask the File Owner to make a change for Labels. From the "Some View", i'd like to call the File Owner and make a request.
From the stand point of the any view residing as part of the nib, how can i know who the "File Owner" of this nib is?
In the Interface Builder, File Owner maintains the IBOutlet to UILabels of the view.
You need to define a delegate (or whatever you like to call it) outlet in your Puzzle1 class and link this to File's owner in the nib. This will give you a pointer to the instance of the view controller that currently owns your view. If you set the type of the delegate to your viewcontroller subclass, then its methods and properties will be available to you from within the view.
This sounds potentially horrendously messy and is probably better solved by using NSNotifications.
But anyways, did you know there's a UINib class? Perhaps you could subclass that and keep track of the owners (which get passed in it's instantiateWithOwner: options: method) as things are loaded.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UIKit/Reference/UINib_Ref/Reference/Reference.html
I have a nib file I want to open up, but it is just an info panel so I dont need any methods for it. Is there a way I can just open it. I am not in a class that is a subclass of NSWindowController.
Yes, you can make any object the owner of a xib. That object, however, has to "host" the outlets used in your xib.
For example, if you have a "ConfirmationSheet.xib", just declare your outlets in the class you want to "own" that instance of the xib, set the File's Owner class to your class, then connect your outlets. Let's use an outlet named "confirmHowMuchSlider" as an example: when the xib is loaded, your class's "confirmHowMuchSlider" outlet will be connected to the slider you connected in the xib and that's that.
Note this generally a sign of not-so-good design, IMO. If it's complicated enough to be in its own xib, it should have its own controller. If it's not complicated (just a sheet), you can sacrifice another 0.001 seconds of app or document load time and put it in a more central xib. :-)
Remember, if you are doing this for performance reasons, a separate round of disk access just to load a single sheet with a few buttons is generally worse in performance than loading more stuff in one go from one xib. All things are a tradeoff.
Look at NSBundle Additions Reference.