Question

I have a problem with NSTextField – that I can’t change the text in it (can change it once, in (void)awakeFromNib, but not after that).

I’ll give you my header and implementation here:

#import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h>
#import "Employee.h"


@interface EmployeeView : NSViewController {  
    NSTextField *mikk;  
    Employee *employee;  
}

@property (retain) IBOutlet NSTextField *mikk;  
@property (retain) Employee *employee;

- (void)setSelectedEmployee:(Employee*)employeeIn;

@end


#import "EmployeeView.h"


@implementation EmployeeView

@synthesize mikk, employee;

- (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil  
{  
    self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil];  
    if (self) {  
        // Initialization code here.  
    }  

return self;  
}  

- (void)setSelectedEmployee:(Employee*)employeeIn  
{  
    employee = employeeIn;  
    NSLog(@"given employee = %@", employee.fullName);
    [mikk setStringValue: @"hi"];  
}  

-(void)awakeFromNib  
{  
    NSLog(@"i awoke");  
    [mikk setStringValue:@"hello"];
}  

- (void)dealloc  
{  
    [employee release];  
    [mikk release];  
    [super dealloc];  
}  

@end  

It may look f-d up, but the main point is that I call the method

- (void)setSelectedEmployee:(Employee*)employeeIn

in my appDelegate and give it the “Employee” that’s selected, thus the instance has an employee to work with. I know for sure, it gets the given employee, because NSLog always prints it out correctly.
The NSTextField called “mikk” is correctly linked in IB, cause it sets the labels text to “hello” in the awakeFromNib method. So the main problem is: why I can’t set the labels text elsewhere?

I know this looks weird/stupid, but please let me know, if you’d like any more information (also what, if you can be more specific) and suggestions to make this text more readable.

Edit: Looked over the code and left only the “i-think-important-bits” in. Also retained the IBOutlet without any effect on the goal.

Answer 1

Are you using garbage collection? Here’s what the docs on nib loading say about object retention under garbage collection:

Most objects in the graph are kept in
memory through strong references
between the objects. Only the
top-level objects in the nib file do
not have strong references initially.
Thus, your code must create strong
references to these objects to prevent
the object graph from being released.

So, if you don’t have a strong reference to the top-level object that contains your text view, probably a view or window, the entire object graph is probably being collected.