objective c - Arrow keys with NSTableView

Question

Is it possible to navigate an NSTableView's editable cell around the NSTableView using arrow keys and enter/tab? For example, I want to make it feel more like a spreadsheet.

The users of this application are expected to edit quite a lot of cells (but not all of them), and I think it would be easier to do so if they didn't have to double-click on each cell.

Answer 1

In Sequel Pro we used a different (and in my eyes simpler) method: We implemented control:textView:doCommandBySelector: in the delegate of the TableView. This method is hard to find -- it can be found in the NSControlTextEditingDelegate Protocol Reference. (Remember that NSTableView is a subclass of NSControl)

Long story short, here's what we came up with (we didn't override left/right arrow keys, as those are used to navigate within the cell. We use Tab to go left/right)

Please note that this is just a snippet from the Sequel Pro source code, and does not work as is

- (BOOL)control:(NSControl *)control textView:(NSTextView *)textView doCommandBySelector:(SEL)command
{
    NSUInteger row, column;

    row = [tableView editedRow];
    column = [tableView editedColumn];

    // Trap down arrow key
    if (  [textView methodForSelector:command] == [textView methodForSelector:@selector(moveDown:)] )
    {
        NSUInteger newRow = row+1;
        if (newRow>=numRows) return TRUE; //check if we're already at the end of the list
        if (column>= numColumns) return TRUE; //the column count could change

        [tableContentView selectRowIndexes:[NSIndexSet indexSetWithIndex:newRow] byExtendingSelection:NO];
        [tableContentView editColumn:column row:newRow withEvent:nil select:YES];
        return TRUE;
    }

    // Trap up arrow key
    else if (  [textView methodForSelector:command] == [textView methodForSelector:@selector(moveUp:)] )
    {
        if (row==0) return TRUE; //already at the beginning of the list
        NSUInteger newRow = row-1;

        if (newRow>=numRows) return TRUE;
        if (column>= numColumns) return TRUE;

        [tableContentView selectRowIndexes:[NSIndexSet indexSetWithIndex:newRow] byExtendingSelection:NO];
        [tableContentView editColumn:column row:newRow withEvent:nil select:YES];
        return TRUE;
    }