Cocoa Development

... an introduction

by Lieven Dekeyser

Last time

• C & Objective-C: don't be afraid
• Memory management: alloc/init, retain, release, autorelease
• Pointers: discipline
• Slides: http://planetreesoftware.com/cocoadevintro/
• Contact: @lieven or lievendekeyser at gmail dot com

Part 2

• AppKit
• Interface Builder
• "Learn by example"

AppKit

• User Interface components
• Document-based applications
• Graphics (bezier paths, transformations, images, OpenGL,...)
• Printing & other system services
• Cocoa Bindings (NSObjectController, NSArrayController,...)

Interface Builder

• "draw" user interfaces...
• ... and connection to the code
• No code generation
• NIB-files de-serialized at runtime

Example: Currency Converter

• Demo time
• Parts of code Interface Builder recognizes:
  • Actions: instance methods with IBAction
  • Outlets: instance variables with IBOutlet
• Connections are checked at runtime (though XIB compiler helps)
• Copy/Paste, Undo/Redo,... all magically work?

Responder chain

• Actions can be sent to the responder chain:
  
• In Interface Builder, connect to actions of the First Responder object
• Menu items enable/disable depending on the current responder chain

Example: WebView Playground

• Demo time
• Use of external framework
• Easy to integrate a web application

Example: Text Editor

• Demo time
• Document-based application
• 2 XIB-files: one for application, one for each document.
• NSDocument subclass to control:
  • Reading/writing data
  • Passing data to views
• Info.plist defines the document types an application can handle
• Responder chain also includes the NSDocument object