As my Cocoa app comes along, my NSWindowController is becoming huuuuuuuuuuge. My window has an NSTabView, and each tab therein has its own NSViewController (they all have submenus) and its own methods. So, my WindowController.m seems to stretch well beyond what it's supposed to because of tabs.
Sadly, examples of NSTabView are quite simple. They don't need any restructuring. So, here I am seeking advice. How can I pull tab-specific content out of the window controller and into their own dedicated objects?
See the example in this Apple Discussions thread: Tab Controllers?
Related
I have been making iOS apps for a while now and I decided that I wanted to start working on making some of them for the Mac too.
The question I have is this: is there any need for an NSWindow, now that developing for the Mac is so similar to iOS??
So I made a simple cocoa application using Xcode and its comes with a storyboard called "Main", just like on iOS.
In that storyboard file, there is a NSWindow which then links to a NSViewController.
Can I get rid of that NSWindow? As I tried setting the NSViewController as the "Initial Controller" and the app still works fine. So whats the point of the NSWindow?
Also, what class links to the NSWindow? I was trying to blur that background of the NSWindow, but I have no way of linking code to the NSWindow.
Sorry for my stupid questions, but I am completely new to development for OS X.
Thanks for your time, Dan.
Those are many questions in one question:
Can I get rid of NSwindow? No, you need a window to show you views.
What is the point of the NSWindow? NSWindow is needed as the window in which the views are displayed and your events are going up the responder chain.
What class is linked to NSWindow? Obviously the NSWindow class, but that is not what you want to know. I think you want to know the delegate that controls NSWindow. This is NSWindowController, although for the MainMenu.xib it is NSAppDelegate.
Hope this gives you the answers you need. An example for working with views in a window is given in this question.
Please, see for further details the windows programming guide, which states:
The NSWindow class defines objects that manage and coordinate the
windows an application displays on the screen. A single NSWindow
object corresponds to at most one onscreen window. The two principal
functions of an NSWindow object are to provide an area in which NSView
objects can be placed and to accept and distribute, to the appropriate
views, events the user instigates through actions with the mouse and
keyboard.
For the question: Can I get rid of NSwindow? I have further comments. In most cases, You need a NSWindow to show view on screen; but in special case you don't, for example, a popup view when you click a NSStatusItem.
So my answer is whenever you need to respond window event such as min/max, you need NSWindow as the view container.
I've done a fair amount of iOS development in the past couple of years, so I'm pretty familiar with iOS architecture and app design (everything's a ViewController that you either push, pop, or stick into tab bars). I've recently started exploring proper Mac app development and feel a little lost. I'd like to really just have a sanity check and maybe some advice as to what the proper way to build an app like this is:
I'd like to build a library-style, single window app, that will spawn additional windows during its operation, but not as full-blown documents. The main window will be laid out much like OS X Lion's Mail.app, with a three-wide split view containing:
A source list, or high-level topic selection
A list view of items pertaining to the topic selected in the first pane
A detail view, which shows the details of the object selected in the middle pane
Like I said, really similar to Mail.app as far as looks go.
My question is really how to glue all this together from inside XCode. Here's where my confusion lies so far:
The default project generated a NIB with a main menu and window. I like to encapsulate functionality, so should I make a window controller for this window and somehow hook it up in Interface Builder, or does window-specific functionality belong somewhere else?
If possible, I'd like each of my three panes to be separate view controllers. I created three NSViewController subclasses (XCode automatically generated NIBs), and added (to the main menu/window NIB) view controller objects with each class specified, hooking up each one's view property to one of the three Custom View generic NSView objects I dropped into the NSSplitView. When I tried to set each view controller's NIB, only the main menu/window NIB appeared in the drop-down, and typing the desired one by hand seemed to have no effect (the view's contents didn't actually appear when running the app). This makes me think I'm doing something wrong.
I'm a little fuzzy on what types of views I should use for each of the first two panes. I'll obviously build a custom one for the final pane, but it seems like the first two should be present in the Cocoa framework already.
Anyway, if I'm doing completely the wrong thing, don't bother addressing my questions; just tell me what I should be doing instead. I think I just need a proper Mac developer to point me in the right direction.
With regard to your first question, you don't need to use the main window that Apple supplies in MainMenu.xib. If you want, you are free to delete that window from the nib and then instantiate an NSWindowController in your applicationDidFinishLaunching: delegate method which then loads and controls the main window.
You are definitely confused about NSViewController, which is not really all that surprising, since you might assume that it works like UIViewController.
In fact, NSViewController is completely different to UIViewController and does not have the same level of Interface Builder support. You can't place a view controller in a window in IB, for example, whereas this is standard practice on iOS. NSViewController is a relatively new class on the Mac and generally you use it to load views programmatically and manage the view content.
The class that most closely maps to UIViewController on the Mac is NSWindowController. This has been around a lot longer than NSViewController and in fact many Mac apps don't use NSViewController at all.
Generally, each window in your app should have a window controller managing it. You can use subclasses of NSWindowController to handle a lot of the functionality for each window.
If you want to use NSViewController, then you should use your window controller to manage those view controller objects. This is generally done programmatically due to the aforesaid lack of Interface Builder support. Each NSViewController instance loads its view from a specific nib file. You generally don't add view controllers in Interface Builder.
For your source list you would generally use an NSOutlineView if you have multiple sections or an NSTableView. These two objects are used whenever you need a list of items. NSOutlineView is hierarchical, whereas NSTableView is flat.
I hope this helps.
I'm making an NSDocument-based application in which I have an inspector window. This inspector window is part of Pwnshop.nib which is my main nib. I have another nib called 'Document.nib,' which is the document window. I want to be able to change the inspector based on which document window is the active one, sorta like Interface Builder's inspector. The problem is that I want to access an object in another nib. Note that there are multiple document windows, but only one inspector window.
Could anyone help me?
This is essentially the same question as found here. The answer is the same, too. You need to read the documentation and learn about Communicating with Objects and plan your architecture so that you get get to some universally-reachable controller (eg [[NSApp delegate] myInspectorController]) from your NSDocument instances.
I can recommend both this and this article (both from Cocoa with Love) for a fundamental lesson in how to structure a Cocoa project. They will answer all of your questions and get you started on a path to building applications the right way.
It seems like there is a lot of online information regarding switching between views in Cocoa Touch, but not that many in "desktop" Cocoa. For an app I am creating, I am wondering the pros/cons of the methods (and please list the methods if you could), and which one people personally use/suggest. I don't think that using an invisible border NSTabView will do the trick for this specific app, but I value all your options. I will be changing the view with some buttons at the side as show in iPhoto, iTunes, and generally most Mac apps out there.
Thanks for any help.
EDIT: I have looked into using NSViewController, but am wondering what advice anyone has about how to use this/why not to use this.
Cathy Shive has created a framework called KTUIKit which was designed with single window applications modeled after iPhoto/iTunes/etc. The KTTabViewController class in particular may be of interest, as it provides a way of switching between an arbitrary number of subviews. They provide a formal way of dealing with nesting views, keeping the responder chain intact, and keeping various notifications properly observed/unobserved. There are also a series of blog posts describing some of the reasoning behind the design and how the classes work (the blog posts refer to them with an "XS" prefix instead of "KT", but they're basically the same thing).
Check out Brandon Walkin's excellent BWToolkit
NSViewController will work fine. I've used it for a very similar situation without any problems.
I think one of my design problems is that I keep creating navigation objects when I should only have one UINavigationController and a delegate. Is that correct?
I not as concerned from a style-preference, but the answer I am looking for is more about the a technical perspective and managing the navigation among several view controllers. Any pointers are very much appreciated and recognized.
I continue to think that I have the SDK under control and then I struggle again.
OK ... I am re-reading Apple's Dev Doc and the answer is 'usually only one, but quite often more than one.'
"iPhone Dev Center: View Controller Programming Guide for iPhone OS: Introduction"
"It makes the most sense to include navigation controllers in your application’s main nib file. You do this when the navigation controller itself provides the main view for your application’s window or in situations where the navigation controller provides the root view for a tab bar interface. Although you could also load standalone or modally presented navigation controllers from your main nib file (or any other nib file), doing so is not optimal. In those scenarios, it is usually easier to create the navigation controller programmatically at the point of use."