Contents

NSDocumentController

An object that manages an app’s documents.

Declaration

@MainActor class NSDocumentController

Overview

As the first-responder target of New and Open menu commands, NSDocumentController creates and opens documents and tracks them throughout a session of the app. When opening documents, a document controller runs and manages the modal Open panel. NSDocumentController objects also maintain and manage the mappings of document types, extensions, and NSDocument subclasses as specified in the CFBundleDocumentTypes property loaded from the information property list (Info.plist).

You can use various NSDocumentController methods to get a list of the current documents, get the current document (which is the document whose window is currently key), get documents based on a given filename or window, and find out about a document’s extension, type, display name, and document class.

In some situations, it’s worthwhile to subclass NSDocumentController in non-NSDocument-based apps to get some of its features. For example, the NSDocumentController management of the Open Recent menu is useful in apps that don’t use subclasses of NSDocument.

Topics

Obtaining the Shared Document Controller

Initializing a New NSDocumentController

Creating and Opening Documents

Managing Documents

Managing Document Types

Autosaving

Closing Documents

Responding to Action Messages

Managing the Open Dialog

Managing the Open Recent Menu

Validating User Interface Items

Sharing

Handling Errors

See Also

Documents