Hello

I’m trying to bind a NSTableView’s NSImageCell via Cocoa Bindings. I have a getter method in MyDocument that sets the image path of my image to be a tiff icon file that exists at the application bundle:

• (NSString *)cellImagePath {

  NSLog([[[NSBundle mainBundle] bundlePath] stringByAppendingString:@”/Contents/Resources/cellImage.tif”]); return [[[NSBundle mainBundle] bundlePath] stringByAppendingString:@”/Contents/Resources/cellImage.tif”];

}

In Interface builder, I have the imageCell bound to File’s Owner (MyDocument) and the Model Key Path is the name of the getter method (cellImagePath). Running the code I don’t get any error and actually the method is fired (I can see that by the log that is created). But no icon appear. What I am missing?

---

I’m assuming that the cell uses - (id)initWithContentsOfFile:(NSString *)filename to load an image at a specific path, then loads that into the cell. But because the images that you are loading are already in your app bundle you might be better off using + (id)imageNamed:(NSString *)name in your getter method and returning an image rather than a string. Then your table’s image cell can use the image directly rather than having to allocate an NSImage and load it from path before displaying.

• (NSImage *)cellImage {

  NSLog(@”imageReturned”); return [NSImage imageNamed:@”cellImage”];

}

However if you must have a path returned then you might not be allocating your NSImage correctly. Your NSImage object should look like this:

NSImage *myCellImage = [[NSImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:cellImagePath];

---

Just found the error - here’s the catch:

I was binding the ImageCell to the results of my getter method, and not the corresponding NSTableColumn. doing that, the image loads correctly.

---

Can you explain that? What, finally, is the complete keypath you had to bind?

---

Sure. The steps to bind an image to a NSImageCell in a NSTableView are:

*On Interface Builder, select the desired NSTableColumn and be sure you’re selecting it, and not the corresponding NSImageCell;

*On the Inspector (Bindings) set the valuePath for the NSTableColumn to be:

*Bind to: in my case, the file’s owner (MyDocument), which is the class where I’ll declare the getter method for the image path

*Controller Key: nothing there

*Model Key Path: cellImagePath (this is the name of the method I have on my MyDocument class that returns the path for the image)

Now, in Xcode, create a class that returns the image path. In my case:

• (NSString *)cellImagePath {

  return [[[NSBundle mainBundle] bundlePath] stringByAppendingString:@”/Contents/Resources/cellImage.tif”];

}

That should work.