Binding an NSTableView to an array of strings in Swift

Question

I\'m showing the contents of an array of strings with an NSTableView via binding through an Array Controller.

I have \"NSString\" in Class Name in the attributes ins

Answer 1

The Class Name should absolutely be set to a valid class. The bigger problem is that the array controller doesn't really play nicely with arrays of strings. There's no (reasonable) way to use -setValue:forKey: on a string since the string is itself what's being edited (replaced), not some property (like "displayName").

I know it seems wasteful, but if you really must use an array controller (more on that in a moment), you should just create a class with a string property and set that as the controller's class name and maintain an array of that class instead of plain strings. Say your array of strings represents tags. Make a Tag class with a name property of type String (or NSString). Set your controller's class name to Tag. This way, there's a key path to which to bind.

But if you really don't see yourself needing anything but an array of strings, you could just use the standard (and infinitely more flexible) [NSTableViewDataSource][1] protocol and good old-fashioned actions triggered by buttons (like Add and Remove). This way you're not fighting the Cocoa Bindings / KVC / KVO mechanisms for what in this case amounts to too-primitive a type (string) for a very abstract controller.

As to amount of work, it's almost "six of one half-dozen of the other" but not quite -- I'd go with the "make it a class with a name property" route for two reasons: 1) It's less work than spinning up a whole table controller / data source, and 2) It's likely you'll later wish you had a more extensible class instead of a simple string for a "list of stuff" even if you don't think so now.