Question

I’m looking to retrieve an XML document from a private API, then parse it into a table view.

I’ve looked through a few articles but I can’t find anything that has helped me fully.

Does anyone have any articles, tutorials, examples, etc that can help me out?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I’d say this can be split into two problems:

First: Parsing XML

There are two ways to do this: some like event-driven XML; I strongly prefer tree-based XML. You should read a little into each of those tutorials and see which makes the most sense to you; I bet you’ll prefer one of them based on your past programming experiences.

Second: Using Table Views

Once you’ve parsed your XML into some sort of dictionary or custom object, you’ll need to display that object’s information in a table view. For that, I suggest bindings. This CocoaDevCentral tutorial explains how to use bindings to display information in an NSTableView. (It even covers using multiple table views to create a Mail.app-like interface, which you may or may not find useful.)

Or… An Alternative, Less Flexible Method

In the guide for tree-based XML, there’s a section on binding NSXMLDocument objects directly to table views. If you’re sure that you’ll be modifying the XML in such a direct way (for example, if you were writing, say, an XML editor!), then maybe that’s a good idea, and you should check out this sample project. Otherwise, it’ll be inflexible and you’ll have to change it soon as you add features.

Good luck!