Creating grouped table view

Question

Can anyone let me know what the procedure is to create the grouped NSTableView similar to the Spotlight results.

Answer 1

You probably won't get 100% there with the default behaviour provided by NSTableView, but pretty close.

For OS X v10.5 and up if you provide a NSTableViewDelegate (NSTableViewDelegate Protocol Reference) there's tableView:isGroupRow: you can provide.

Here's what it does for Default and Source List style table views on 10.6:
(setting the grouping flag for folders)

You can also provide tableView:heightOfRow: to adjust the row spacing and it get's pretty close (though with the group and content on different rows):

Other options that come to mind:

• provide a custom NSCell with image and text plus styling, or
• (for 10.7 and above) use an NSView based table view and an appropriate template

The TableViewPlayground example might offer a good starting point for the latter.