Swift NSSearchField NSArrayController No Bindings

Created By:Debasis Das (May 2016)

In this post we will create a simple cocoa application to filter the data in a NSTableView using a NSSearchField without using Bindings

The NSArrayController will maintain the backup data in the form of its content and the NSArrayController->arrangedObjects will return the filtered contents.

//  AppDelegate.swift
//  NSSearchField_ArrayController_NoBindings
//  Created by Debasis Das on 26/05/16.
//  Copyright © 2016 Knowstack. All rights reserved.

import Cocoa

@NSApplicationMain
//App Delegate will be the delegate and datasource for the table view
class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate,NSTableViewDelegate,NSTableViewDataSource,NSSearchFieldDelegate {

    @IBOutlet weak var window: NSWindow!
    @IBOutlet weak var tableView:NSTableView!
    @IBOutlet weak var searchField:NSSearchField!
   
    var contacts:[Person] = [] //Create an empty Array to hold the person records
    var personArrayController:NSArrayController = NSArrayController()
    
    func applicationDidFinishLaunching(aNotification: NSNotification) {
        self.tableView.setDelegate(self)
        self.tableView.setDataSource(self)
        self.searchField.delegate = self
        
        for item in self.dataArray(){
            self.contacts.append(item as! Person) //Adding person objects to the contacts property
        }

        self.personArrayController.content = contacts //Setting the contents of the array controller as the recently created contacts. 
//Alternatively the array controllers content must be updated from the data fetched from db
        self.tableView.reloadData()

    }

   
    
    override func controlTextDidChange(obj: NSNotification) {
        var searchString = ""
        searchString = ((obj.object as? NSSearchField)?.stringValue)!
        let predicate = NSPredicate(format: "firstName contains %@ OR lastName contains %@ ",searchString,searchString)
        
        if searchString != ""{
            self.personArrayController.filterPredicate = predicate
        }
        else{
            self.personArrayController.filterPredicate = nil
        }
        
        self.tableView.reloadData()
    }

//Table View Delegate and datasource methods
    func numberOfRowsInTableView(tableView: NSTableView) -> Int {
        return self.personArrayController.arrangedObjects.count
    }

    func tableView(tableView: NSTableView, objectValueForTableColumn tableColumn: NSTableColumn?, row: Int) -> AnyObject? {
        if let tColIdentifier = tableColumn?.identifier{
            let str = self.personArrayController.arrangedObjects[row].valueForKey(tColIdentifier)
            return str
        }
        else{
            return ""
        }
        
    }

    func applicationWillTerminate(aNotification: NSNotification) {
        // Insert code here to tear down your application
    }

    func dataArray()->NSMutableArray{
        let arr = NSMutableArray()
        arr.addObject(Person.createPerson("Debasis", lName: "aabb"))
        arr.addObject(Person.createPerson("John", lName: "ccdd"))
        arr.addObject(Person.createPerson("Jane", lName: "eeff"))
        return arr
    }

}


class Person:NSObject{
    var firstName:String = ""
    var lastName:String = ""
    
    class func createPerson(fName:String, lName:String)->Person{
        let person = Person()
        person.firstName = fName
        person.lastName = lName
        return person
        
    }
}

On build and Run

On entering a search query

Note: The Searches are case sensitive

The working code can be downloaded here NSSearchField_ArrayController_NoBindings