CODEWITHSUNDEEP
objective-ccocoaosx-snow-leopardnsviewnsviewcontroller
user970251
user970251

Reputation: 355

How to bind nib custom view to a NSVIew subclass

I have a simple requirement. On Click of a + button, I am trying to add a custom view to a SplitView.

I have created a class MyCustomView which is a subclass of NSView

In the applications nib file, I have a custom view which contains the buttons etc.

Now How to allocate a new MyCustomView every time ?

Is there an example to do this?

I am hoping something like

MyCustomView *v1 = [[MyCustomView alloc] init];

..
..
[splitView addSubView:v1];
[splitView addSubView:v2];

...

Please help

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1036

Answers (1)

Joshua Nozzi
Joshua Nozzi

Reputation: 61228

It's hard to tell exactly what you're describing based on your description but let's see if I understand you. You want to add a "copy" of your custom view assembly into a split view each time "+" is clicked, right?

The absolute best way to do this is to put the custom view assembly that will be copied (the "prototype") in its own xib. For each object you want to represent, you will instantiate a new copy from the xib and give it to some owner then add it to some parent view (a split view in your case ... odd for an unlimited number of views, but I don't have enough detail to say otherwise).

So. In the modern Cocoa world, such a view assembly should likely have its own view controller (NSViewController). This makes things easier for you since the xib's File's Owner will be an instance of your MyCustomViewController, whose -view is connected to the main container view in the xib (your custom view with all its subviews) and whose -representedObject is set to whatever model object your custom view represents. Your app will then maintain a list (an array or a dictionary, perhaps) of all the view controllers for the model objects. See this SO question/answer for a run-down of how to load from nibs/xibs.

This is basically how an NSCollectionView works (though the views must all be the same size - might not work for you). The collection view corresponds to your split view in this case; NSCollectionViewItem corresponds to your MyCustomViewController (and in fact on 10.5 and above NSCollectionViewItem is a subclass of NSViewController); your custom view is the collection view item's main -view. For each model object in its collection, it instantiates an NSCollectionViewItem and loads the view prototype from a xib (ideally, but this is optional), and uses this to set the item's view, then it sets the item's represented object (the model object).

I hope this clarifies things a bit. You've got some reading to do in order to understand enough of the nuts and bolts, but if you're still stuck, you might try editing your question to clarify or opening a new, more specific question.

Upvotes: 3

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