Cocoa binding to a particular item in an array controller

Question

Is it possible using NSArrayController to bind a NSTextField's value to a particular item in the array? In particular, I want to bind to a property on the first item in the array, and show nothing if the array is empty.

Using arrangedObjects.command shows just "(" -- presumably it's trying to show a multi-line string with comma-separated strings for each item. I just want the first one.

Answer 1

Bind the text field to selection.command, and programmatically set the array controller's selection index to 0. You may need to also re-set the selection index to 0 any time you add or remove items to the content array.

Obviously, this won't work if you're allowing the user to select items within the array controller (you'd need a second array controller). I'm assuming that's not the case, since if it were, I'd expect you to want to show the user-selected object, instead of always the first object.

Answer 2

I have a similar question about using an NSArrayController. Once I set it up as Peter described, it successfully displays just the object at whatever index I want, but it does two things wrong. First, a table view displays the same (correct) object one time for each member of the content array. Secondly, I can't find a way to prevent the array controller from being selectable. Any help?