selectText of NSTextField on focus

Question

Could anybody suggest a method to select all the text of an NSTextField when the user clicks it?

I did find suggestions to subclass NSTextField

Answer 1

Some updates with Swift:

import Cocoa

class TextFieldSubclass: NSTextField {
    override func mouseDown(theEvent: NSEvent) {
        super.mouseDown(theEvent)
        if let textEditor = currentEditor() {
            textEditor.selectAll(self)
        }
    }
}

Or for precise selection:

import Cocoa

class TextFieldSubclass: NSTextField {
    override func mouseDown(theEvent: NSEvent) {
        super.mouseDown(theEvent)
        if let textEditor = currentEditor() {
            textEditor.selectedRange = NSMakeRange(location, length)
        }
    }
}

---

Swift version, works for me:

import Cocoa

class TextFieldSubclass: NSTextField {
    override func becomeFirstResponder() -> Bool {
        let source = CGEventSourceCreate(CGEventSourceStateID.HIDSystemState)
        let tapLocation = CGEventTapLocation.CGHIDEventTap
        let cmdA = CGEventCreateKeyboardEvent(source, 0x00, true)
        CGEventSetFlags(cmdA, CGEventFlags.MaskCommand)
        CGEventPost(tapLocation, cmdA)
        return true
    }
}