Introduction to Token Field Programming Guide for Cocoa

Describes how to set up and programatically manage a token field.

Token Fields at a Glance

A token field is a text field with tokens as content. A token represents a string or other object.

Construction: Single-cell control
Classes and inheritance: Control: NSTokenField : NSTextField : NSControl : NSView : NSResponder : NSObject
Cell: NSTokenFieldCell : NSTextFieldCell : NSActionCell : NSCell : NSObject

Design patterns: Target-action, delegation, key-value observing

Object attributes: Tokenizing character set, completion delay, token style

Important methods: objectValue (NSControl), tokenField:completionsForSubstring:indexOfToken:indexOfSelectedItem: (delegate), tokenField:representedObjectForEditingString: (delegate), tokenField:displayStringForRepresentedObject:d (delegate), tokenField:menuForRepresentedObject: (delegate)

Important bindings: value

Usage guidelines: Under “Text Controls” in “ UI Element Guidelines: Controls " (Apple Human Interface Guidelines)

Organization of This Document

This document consists of the following chapters:

About Token Fields describes what token fields are designed to do in a user interface and offers some guidelines for their usage.
How Token Fields Work discusses the central concepts and mechanisms of token fields.
Configuring Token Fields explains how to configure token fields and connect them to other objects in an application.
Displaying the Completion List describes how to display a list of possible completions for the currently entered substring.
Returning Represented Objects shows how to return an array of represented objects for the tokens in a token field.
Getting and Setting Token-Field Values shows how to extract and set the contents of a token field.
Implementing Menus for Tokens discusses how to associate menus with tokens in a token field.