Making a NSDocument application with PyObjC
To break things up a bit, I’ve been working on a different application, with the intent to return to the birthday example from Parts 1, 2 and 3 at a later date.
I’d been playing with a regular expression builder from the .NET world and decided that a similar tool for Mac OS X seemed like a good idea. To be useful, I wanted each regular expression that I was working on to be treated as a separate document, and to be able to store not only the regular expression, but also any test data I’d been using.
Future features will include some form of highlighting, replace expressions, more ways to run the expression against some data, the ability to generate code snippets (python, perl, etc) and some graphical way of building expressions.
From within XCode, create a new project and select PyObjC Document-based Application. Give the project a name (ie. RegExStudio), pick somewhere to store it and you should end up with the a working project that implements a very basic text editor. Build and run the application to try it out.
The project wizard creates a bunch of very useful things, however to make things easier, we are going to use Cocoa Bindings instead of the connection based version implemented by the wizard. The name of your project is used in things like the document’s type, so where I’m using RegExStudio, use whatever your application is called.
To start, open the RegExStudioDocument.py file and remove all of the class implementation, except for the windowNibName method. This defines which NIB file contains the interface for our document.
You should now have something like:
class RegExStudioDocument(NibClassBuilder.AutoBaseClass):
def windowNibName(self):
return u'RegExStudioDocument'
The aim is to start with three keys for the controller object to manage: regularExpression, testString and search. The first two will be standard strings, with the third a dynamically calculated value based on the first two. This will allow our result to update as the expression or the test string change.
Next up, set some default values. This isn’t completely required, but makes it easier to use. Once I figure out preferences, then these values will be configurable, but one step at a time.
def init(self):
self = super(RegExStudioDocument, self).init()
self.regularExpression = 'w+'
self.testString =
'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.'
return self
This is all that is required to get the first two keys working, the third requires another two pieces of code. Firstly, we use python’s regular expression capabilities to do the search. It is also worth ensuring that an invalid regular expression results in a valid value, thus the try block:
def search(self):
try:
result = re.search(self.regularExpression,
self.testString).group()
except:
return ''
return result
Secondly, we need to let the object know that this is a calculated value, and that changes to either of the first two, will update search key. This is done by setting which keys trigger a change notification, with the following method:
RegExStudioDocument.
setKeys_triggerChangeNotificationsForDependentKey_(
[u'regularExpression', u'testString'],
u'search'
)
Note that this is a method call on the document itself, not a definition of a member, so it should be at the same indent level as the class. Put it at the end of the file for now.
From within XCode, open the RegExStudioDocument.nib file. This will launch Interface Builder with the user interface for the document.
Resize the default NSTextView so that it takes up a third of the screen and give it a text label above of Regular Expression. Add two more NSTextView controls, with text labels of Input Text and Result Text.
Uncheck Multiple Fonts Allowed on all three NSTextView controls in the Inspector window. On the Result Text uncheck the Editable option, as attempting to write to the search key will cause errors.
To use Cocoa bindings, there needs to be a controller object of some sort. As we are dealing with a single document in each window, drag a NSObjectController object to the Instances pane. Ctrl-drag from the controller to the File's Owner object and connect to the content outlet. This sets the controller up to manage the RegExStudioDocument.
With the controller connected add the three keys, regularExpression, testString and search to the controller’s attributes.
Bind each of the controls to the appropriate key using the value property. Double click on the NSTextView controls to access the right binding set. A single click will only select the bounding object, which is a NSScrollView.
Finally, ensure that the Continuously Updates Values option is set for the first two controls. This option will mean that the regular expression is evaluated on every key press, giving you a live view of the result.
Now if you run the application, you can enter in a regular expression and have it applied to the input text!
% open build/RegExStudio.app
Before I go, two more pieces of code … add the following methods to the RegExStudioDocument class:
def dataRepresentationOfType_(self, aType):
# Create a dictionary to put the variable in
dict = NSMutableDictionary.alloc().init()
dict['regex'] = self.regularExpression
dict['text'] = self.testString
return NSKeyedArchiver.archivedDataWithRootObject_(dict)
def loadDataRepresentation_ofType_(self, data, aType):
# Extract to a NSMutableDictionary
dict = NSKeyedUnarchiver.unarchiveObjectWithData_(data)
self.regularExpression = dict['regex']
self.testString = dict['text']
return True
The above two methods over-ride existing NSDocument methods and will encode and decode the regular expression and test data to and from a NSKeyedArchiver. Behind the scenes, the wizard and the NSDocument infrastructure have implemented the Save and Open functionality.
Congratulations, you now have a NSDocument based application which can save files. The complete example is available here.
Aside: In the process of building RegExStudio, I discovered that a similar tool already existed and also used PyObjC! If you actually need a tool for regular expressions, RegExplor has a better feature set … for now.
1 Comment, Posted by Geoff Wilson in: Python, Cocoa Bindings, PyObjC
