I have been struggling for some time to find how to get a keypress in NSOutlineView into my Controller.

There seem to be many others asking similar questions so I decided document my solution which may help.

I created a class MyOutlineView subclassing NSOutlineView and implemented @protocol MyOutlineViewDelegate

MyOutlineView overrides keyDown: and sends any key to the delegate.

If the delegate handles the key it should return YES, otherwise NO.

// MyOutlineView.h #import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h>

@protocol MyOutlineViewDelegate @optional -(BOOL) keyPressedInOutlineView:(unichar) character; @end

@interface MyOutlineView : NSOutlineView { NSObject *keyDelegate; } @property (assign) IBOutlet NSObject *keyDelegate;

@end

// MyOutlineView.m #import “MyOutlineView.h”

@implementation MyOutlineView @synthesize keyDelegate;

-(void)keyDown:(NSEvent *)theEvent { unichar character = theEvent characters] characterAtIndex:0]; if([self.keyDelegate respondsToSelector:@selector(keyPressedInOutlineView:)]) if([self.keyDelegate keyPressedInOutlineView:character]) return; [super keyDown:theEvent]; }

@end

In Interface Builder change the class of the OutlineView to MyOutlineView and connect the keyDelegate output to the Controller. Implement the following in your Controller and process the keys as required.

-(BOOL)keyPressedInOutlineView:(unichar) character { [[NSLog (@”Key in Controller! %C”, character); if (character == 0x0d) { NSLog (@”Return in OutlineView!”); return YES; } return NO; }