NSTokenField autocomplete

Question

Hi,

I'm creating an application which uses an NSTokenField. I need autocompletion. I'm using an NSURLRequest to request data from http://stackoverflow.com/filter/tags?_=<timestamp>&limit=6&q=<str_to_autocomplete>&timestamp=<timestamp>

Where <timestamp> is the current timestamp, an <str_to_autocomplete> is the string to autocomplete. So, e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/filter/tags?_=1263657227137&q=lol&limit=6&timestamp=1263657227137

The response is in this format:

javascript|23179
jquery|16936
sql-server|11768
ruby-on-rails|8669
best-practices|7037
ruby|6722

(The number is the number of times this tag is used).

I need to give provide the user a list under the NSTokenField with this list of tags, and the user can either select one of the list, or continue typing.

Can anyone help me? Thanks.

Edit: I'm looking at Mac Dev Center now. Should I use this method: tokenField:completionsForSubstring:indexOfToken:indexOfSelectedItem: ?

Answer 1

tokenField:completionsForSubstring:indexOfToken:indexOfSelectedItem: will be send to the delegate to query an array of strings. These strings should then be processed by the tokenfield in representedObject (or not if you need only strings).

Example in your tokenField delegate:

- (NSArray *)tokenField:(NSTokenField *)tokenField completionsForSubstring:(NSString *)substring indexOfToken:(NSInteger)tokenIndex indexOfSelectedItem:(NSInteger *)selectedIndex
{
    //code to find the tags strings corresponding to substring (the string typed in the token)
    //then put them in an array (returnArray)
    return returnArray;
}

the tokenField will present the strings completed in a menu as you type. All details are in the doc.