CocoaDev

Hi,

I have a simple question. I have an NSArrayController driving the contents of an NSTableView, and I want a separate controller to be informed when the selection in the tableview changes.

At first I used the delegate system and tableViewSelectionDidChange:(NSNotification*)notification.

However, I thought I’d try and use key value observing to do the same thing a different way. I set up my KVO in the following way (my ‘normal’ Controller observing my NSArrayController): [arrayController addObserver:self forKeyPath:@”selection” options:NSKeyValueObservingOptionOld context:NULL];.

It doesn’t work however. I think I have the ‘ forKeyPath:’ part wrong. Where can I find the keys which I can use to observe for classes I didn’t create (i.e. the framework classes, such as NSArrayController)? Do I look through the header files?

Thanks for moving me in the right direction on this one… any assistance is much appreciated!

What are you trying to observe, exactly? What do you intend to do once changes are made to the array controller you want to observe?

I want to observe the state of the selection, so that when it’s changed I can change the Predicate Filter for a different Array Controller, thus achieving a SmartGroup kind of set-up. I don’t care at all what it’s changed to or from, I just want to be notified when the selection of that NSArrayController has changed at all.

Mmalc’s is probably a useful bit of code to scan for the details of interfacing with an NSArrayController…

Update: here’s a link to Mmalc’s page where you’ll find his graphic bindings example:

http://homepage.mac.com/mmalc/CocoaExamples/controllers.html

Thanks for the help, that’s an excellent resource.

I’m having trouble setting the Filter Predicate of an NSArrayController in code. I set the filter predicte to something (say ‘title == ‘something*) and that works great. But then if i then go and (in a different part of the interface) change an entitie’s title attribute to be ‘something’ the tableview doesn’t update :(

Any ideas? Do I have to force a refresh somewhere?

… the behaviour is perfect when I set the filter predicate in Interface Builder. … why does it not recognize when an item is changed when I change the filter predicate in code??

I am doing the following:

[filterController setFilterPredicate:[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"(title == \"foo\")"]];

What’s wrong here??

Thanks!

Try sending your controller a -fetch: … you are correct in your guess that you must refresh when objects are changed. Forcing your controller to fetch will update its contents according to its filter predicate.