Giving a Boolean property to a controller object in Interface Builder

Question

After I drag a controller object to the document window, how do I give it a Boolean property?

Answer 1

Assuming you want the ability to expose and edit the property values of your custom controller as attributes showing up in IB's inspector, you'll need to write your own plugin which tells IB what the inspector should look like. This really can't be answered briefly.

Here's Apple's reference on IB Plugins: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/IBPlugInGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40004323-CH1-SW1

And here's the inspector portion: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/IBPlugInGuide/CreatingInspectors/CreatingInspectors.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40004323-CH6-SW1

If you truly just want to add a property to the controller's interface, you do this in Xcode (modifying the interface and implementation accordingly) and IB will pick up the changes automagically.

Answer 2

In the case of a checkbox, the checkbox itself is either checked or not. That state stores the boolean value instead of the controller (unless you wish it.)

To have the app undertake an action upon clicking it, think of it as a button instead of a data display and link it to an action method in the view controller. That's the simplest and old school way of doing it.

To use binding, you need to bind the checkbox's value attribute to a controller. Usually for binary values its an object controller. So, in IB, drag an Object controller to your nib window and bind it to your data source. Then, drag a checkmark button to the interface. In the checkmarks binding inspector. Set "value" binding to the name of the object controller, controller key to selection, keypath to the name of the data source attribute and provide a value transformer if needed.