Question

I have a list of elements which needs to be displayed in a NSPopUpButton. I want the PopUp button to display the list in alphabetically sorted order. Moreover, there is a NEW MenuItem in the list which would pick up a string from a text field and insert it into the PopUp button. So, there are two questions I would like to ask:

1. What is the correct way of displaying a list of elements in sorted order in a NSPopUpButton?
2. How should I handle the insertion of new element to NSPopUpButton so that the sorting order is maintained?

Answer 1

I’ve managed to sort the popup button using the following bindings:

[arrayController bind:@"contentArray" toObject:self withKeyPath:@"displayElements" options:nil];
[popUpButton bind:@"content" toObject:arrayController withKeyPath:@"arrangedObjects" options:nil];
[popUpButton bind:@"contentValues" toObject:arrayController withKeyPath:@"arrangedObjects.title" options:nil];

Also I have changed the statement in init from:

displayElements = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"one",@"two",@"three", nil];

to

displayElements = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithObjects:[[NSMenuItem alloc]initWithTitle:@"one" action:nil keyEquivalent:@""],
                                                              [[NSMenuItem alloc]initWithTitle:@"two" action:nil keyEquivalent:@""],
                                                              [[NSMenuItem alloc]initWithTitle:@"three" action:nil keyEquivalent:@""],
                                                              nil];

and the sorting is working just fine.

Now the issue is that if I add a Sub-Menu to any of the menu Items and after that I add a new NSMenuItem to the array controller, the Sub-Menu Previously added disappears as shown in images below:

Before adding New Item:

After adding a new Item:

The Same behavior is being displayed when we sort the elements.
Any ideas on fixing this problem??