Get path of dropped file in cocoa application - xcode

I wondering how you would retrieve the path of the file that a user has dragged and dropped into a cocoa application. For example: User drags a file named test from his/her desktop. Then the cocoa application would say: Users/currentusername/Desktop/test
Thanks for the help!

I just downloaded Apple's "CocoaDragAndDrop" sample code and tried it out.
When I drag in a PNG file from the Finder into the running app, the title of the window changes to the path of the image that was dragged in.
Looking inside the sample code, I can see a file URL is included in the Pasteboard:
//if the drag comes from a file, set the window title to the filename
fileURL=[NSURL URLFromPasteboard: [sender draggingPasteboard]];
[[self window] setTitle: fileURL!=NULL ? [fileURL absoluteString] : #"(no name)"];
Try this technique in your own code and modify it for taste.

The accepted answer is no longer working with Xcode 6.
I've found this methode to get the same result:
NSURL*fileURL = [NSURL URLFromPasteboard: [sender draggingPasteboard]];
NSString *filePath = [fileURL path];
[[self window] setTitle:filePath];

Currently working on developing a similar interface, I’ve understood that the OP had asked for path, not URL retrieval. It seems the suggested OS X 10.10 (XCode6) workaround for the accepted answer has issues in refusing to drag and drop content between windows.
However, avoiding declaring NSString *filePath, but simply substituting the [fileURL absoluteString] method with [fileURL path] method in line 175 of DragDropImageView.m of the suggested sample code instead, seems to solve it:
fileURL=[NSURL URLFromPasteboard: [sender draggingPasteboard]];
[[self window] setTitle: fileURL!=NULL ? [fileURL path] : #"(no name)"];
It compiles and runs as devised in Xcode4 through Xcode6, SDK 10.8-10.10, AFAICT.
Hope this can help.

Related

Bring all NSDocument windows to front when opened

In most systems, the default behaviour for "open a new window" is that it appears at the front. This doesn't happen in Cocoa, and I'm trying to find the "correct" way to make this standard behaviour. Most things I've tried only work for a maximum of one window.
I need to open multiple windows on startup:
(N x NSDocuments (one window each)
1 x simple NSWindowController that opens a NIB file.
Things that DON'T work:
Iterate across all the NSDocuments I want to open, and open them.
What happens? ... only the "last" one that call open on comes to the front - the rest are hidden, invisible, nowhere on the screen, until you fast-switch or use the Window menu to find them.
Code:
...documents is an array of NSPersistentDocument's, loaded from CoreData...
[NSDocumentController sharedDocumentController];
[controller openDocumentWithContentsOfURL:[documents objectAtIndex:0] display:YES error:&error];
Manually invoking "makeKeyAndOrderFront" on each window, after it's opened
What happens? nothing different. But the only way I can find to get the NSWindow instance is so horribly hacky it seems totally wrong (but is mentioend in several blogs and mailing list posts)
Code:
[NSDocumentController sharedDocumentController];
NSDocument* openedDocument = [controller openDocumentWithContentsOfURL:[documents objectAtIndex:0] display:YES error:&error];
[[[[openedDocument windowControllers] objectAtIndex:0] window] makeKeyAndOrderFront:nil];
...I know I'm doing this wrong, but I can't find out why/what to do differently :(.
Something that works, usually, but not always:
As above, but just use "showWindow" instead (I took this from the NSDocument guide).
Bizarrely, this sometimes works ... even though it's the exact code that Apple claims they're calling internally. If they're calling it internally, why does it behave different if I re-invoke it after they've already done so?
[[[openedDocument windowControllers] objectAtIndex:0] showWindow:self];
You can just open all the documents without displaying and then tell the documents to show their windows:
NSArray* docs = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:#"doc1.rtf", #"doc2.rtf",#"doc3.rtf",#"doc4.rtf",nil];
for(NSString* doc in docs)
{
NSURL* url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:[[NSHomeDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"Documents"] stringByAppendingPathComponent:doc]];
NSError* err;
[[NSDocumentController sharedDocumentController] openDocumentWithContentsOfURL:url display:NO error:&err];
}
[[[NSDocumentController sharedDocumentController] documents] makeObjectsPerformSelector:#selector(showWindows)];
Won't this work?
For 10.6 or greater
[[NSRunningApplication currentApplication] activateWithOptions:(NSApplicationActivateAllWindows | NSApplicationActivateIgnoringOtherApps)];
This often has something to do with the app itself: your other windows are behind other apps (in particular, behind Xcode!), and would have appeared with a Hide Others command.
The solution to that problem would be that after you send showWindow to all of your windows (making sure you do the key one last), you tell the app to come forward, relative to other apps.
NSApp.activateIgnoringOtherApps(true) // Swift
or
[NSApp activateIgnoringOtherApps:YES]; // Objective-C
See also: How to bring NSWindow to front and to the current Space?

How to open a folder?

After save a file I want to open the folder of saved file. How do I do that? Thank you very much!
If I understand your question, you want to open the folder into which something was saved in the Finder?
This should do the trick -- it assumes that you have a reference to the savePanel.
NSURL *fileURL = [savePanel URL];
NSURL *folderURL = [fileURL URLByDeletingLastPathComponent];
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openURL: folderURL];
If you are starting with an NSString containing the path, then start with:
NSURL *fileURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath: stringContainingPath];
Even better would be to not just open the folder, but have the saved file selected. NSWorkspace can do that for you:
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] activateFileViewerSelectingURLs:
#[ URLToSavedFile ]];
The argument is an array of URLs, so if you have only one file you want to reveal, you simply pass an array of one object.
If, for some reason, you're targeting a version of Mac OS X older than 10.6, you'd use the older path-based method instead:
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] selectFile:pathToSavedFile
inFileViewerRootedAtPath:#""];
(You want to pass an empty string for the second argument so that the Finder will reuse an existing Finder window for the folder, if there is one.)
I know this post is fairly old, but with 10.9 what you want to do is
NSString* folder = #"/path/to/folder"
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace]openFile:folder withApplication:#"Finder"];

How can I load an NSImage representation of the icon for my application?

I have a custom icon file (MyApp.icns) set up for my Cocoa App. How can I access an NSImage representation of the icon from within my application?
Something like the following would be perfect:
NSImage * iconImage = [MyApplication defaultIconAsImage];
But I'm sure it isn't that easy :)
I can, of course, get a path to the icon file as follows:
NSString * iconPath = [[NSBundle mainBundle]
pathForResource:#"MyApp" ofType:#"icns"];
But it seems to me that there should be some kind of standard way to access the icon file for the application, other than calling it by name, since the name could change.
What is the proper way to do this?
[NSApp applicationIconImage]
Just for completeness - This is how you get the icon for any application or file on your system.
NSImage *iconImage = [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] iconForFile:#"path"];
Pass in the path to the application bundle for an application icon or the path to a file for the icon associated with the file.
Note that -[NSApplication applicationIconImage] doesn't return the correct icon when a custom icon is pasted onto the app. Then you need to do:
NSString* appPath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] bundlePath];
NSImage* appIcon = [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] iconForFile:appPath];
(Reference the dock icon code I wrote for Chromium: http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/chrome/browser/ui/cocoa/dock_icon.mm)

How do I handle multiple file drag/drop from Finder in Mac OS X 10.5?

I need to get the URLs of all files dragged/dropped into my application from Finder.
I have a Cocoa app running on 10.6 which does this by using the new 10.6 NSPasteboard APIs which handle multiple items on the pasteboard. I'm trying to backport this app to 10.5. How do I handle this on 10.5?
If I do something like below, I only get the first URL:
NSArray *pasteTypes = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: NSURLPboardType, nil];
NSString *bestType = [pboard availableTypeFromArray:pasteTypes];
if (bestType != nil) {
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLFromPasteboard:pboard];
}
Getting multiple filenames is easy: (While getting multiple URLs is not with 10.5)
Register your view for
NSFilenamesPboardType
In performDragOperation: do the following to get an array of file paths:
NSPasteboard* pboard = [sender draggingPasteboard];
NSArray* filenames = [pboard propertyListForType:NSFilenamesPboardType];
The IKImageKit programming topics outline a way to do this like so (paraphrased):
NSData *data = [pasteboard dataForType:NSFilenamesPboardType];
NSArray *filenames = [NSPropertyListSerialization
propertyListFromData:data
mutabilityOption:kCFPropertyListImmutable
format:nil
errorDescription:&errorDescription];
See here: Image Kit Programming Guide: Supporting Drag and Drop
The NSURLPboardType just handles one URL.
To get a list of files you need to create a NSArray from a NSFilenamesPboardType.
Apple's docs on drag and drop are pretty good, even if it's older stuff.
How do I handle [multiple items on a pasteboard] on 10.5?
Try the Pasteboard Manager.
The tricky part is that you're handling a drop, which means you're receiving an NSPasteboard already created for you, and there's no way to convert between NSPasteboard objects and PasteboardRefs. You'll have to ask the NSPasteboard for its name, then pass the same name to PasteboardCreate, and that may not work.
my two cents for swift 5.1 (drop in NSView... to be customized)
see at:
Swift: Opening a file by drag-and-drop in window

Printing a file to NSImage not working right (cocoa)

This is probably a n00b question so I apologize in advance. I'm working with NSImage for the first time and basically I need to simply take a picture that is in my Resources folder, and have it display in an NSView/NSImageWell when a button is clicked.
NSImage *image = [[NSImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:#"tiles.PNG"];
if ( [image isValid] ) {
NSImageView *view = [[NSImageView alloc] init];
[selection setImage:image];
[selection setImageScaling:NSScaleProportionally];
}
else {
--- This line of code always activates meaning my image isn't valid
}
My only guess is that I am getting the path wrong to the image file and I have looked all over for the right way to access it. Another guess is that I have my code wrong. Anybody familiar with this? Thanks!
I work a lot more with the iPhone, but initWithContentsOfFile seems to require a full/relative path, which I assume tiles.PNG wouldn't fulfill.
I'd use the class method imageNamed:(NSString *)name, which will search your bundle for you.
You should use NSBundleManger to locate the image like so:
NSBundle *mb=[NSBundle mainBundle];
NSString *fp=[mb pathForResource:#"titles" ofType:#"PNG"];
UIImage *img=[UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:fp];
That way you don't have to mess with internal paths yourself. Otherwise, you have to have the path relative to the final built product which is hard to create and maintain.

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