focus a NSTextField

Question

I have a NSTextField and I want to set its content if I klick on a button and than set the cursor on this textfield at the end of the text so if someone klicks the button he could just begin to type.

Until now I use [NSTextField selectText] it selects this textfield but it selects the whole text so if someone just begins to type he'd lose all the text which alread is in the textfield.

score 34 · Answer 1 · edited May 14 '13 at 16:02

34

or even easier

[yourTextField becomeFirstResponder];

edited May 14 '13 at 16:02

Anoop Vaidya

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answered Jan 06 '11 at 19:31

ewcy

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The problem with that is that this selects all the text and if you begin to type the prepopulated text will be overwritten, I wanted to set the cursor behind the text. – Jeena Nov 08 '11 at 21:11
17

This method is deprecated in 10.5, furthermore, if you read the documentation for this method it quite clearly states 'Never invoke this method directly.' – Alan Rogers Nov 29 '11 at 23:52
2

Good point, Alan, I've just removed a bunch of calls that were raising an exception for using becomeFirstResponder directly, using the 10.8 SDK. – Pablo D. Oct 12 '12 at 18:02

score 22 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 19 '09 at 10:53

Ok I found it out now :)

- (IBAction)focusInputField:(id)sender {
    [textField selectText:self];
    [[textField currentEditor] setSelectedRange:NSMakeRange([[textField stringValue] length], 0)];  
}

and in RubyCocoa it is:

def select_input_field
    @input.selectText self
    range = OSX::NSRange.new(@input.stringValue.length, 0)
    @input.currentEditor.setSelectedRange range
end

score 11 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 20 '15 at 18:03

11

You'll want to do something like this:

[[self window] makeFirstResponder:[self yourTextField]];

edited Nov 20 '15 at 18:03

pkamb

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answered Apr 18 '09 at 21:12

joshwbrick

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This also selects the text :-/ – Jeena Apr 18 '09 at 23:25

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered May 16 '10 at 10:37

3

I am writing an ingame plugini, I were having a similar problem:

- (void)gotEvent:(NSEvent *)newEvent
{
  [mainWindow makeKeyAndOrderFront:self];
  [mainWindow makeFirstResponder:messageField];
  [mainWindow sendEvent:newEvent]; // will forward the typing event
}

this does the job :)

answered May 16 '10 at 10:37

Antwan van Houdt

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where do you call gotEvent from? – Sentry.co Aug 09 '17 at 16:50

vasylz · Answer 5 · 2013-09-04T20:30:31.960

Some time ago I did similar task. My solution was write down small category method for partial text selection for NSTextField. This method does job like original selectText: does (with setting focus to control).

@implementation NSTextField( SelExt )

-(void)selectTextRange:(NSRange)range
{
   NSText *textEditor = [self.window fieldEditor:YES forObject:self];
   if( textEditor ){
      id cell = [self selectedCell];
      [cell selectWithFrame:[self bounds] inView:self 
            editor:textEditor delegate:self
            start:range.location length:range.length];
   }
}

@end

with this method you may place text selection where you want and start typing right after that.

focus a NSTextField

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