How to make NSSearchField send action upon autocompletion?

Question

This question seems straightforward but I've tried everything I can think of, and Googled for hours.

I have an NSSearchField that does autocomplete, basically copying Apple's SearchField sample code. I have turned off "Sends Whole Search String" in IB because I don't want to do the search until the user has finalized their text entry, and don't want to do multiple searches (they are expensive).

As the user types in the field, when they press enter, specifying that they accept the current autocompletion, I want the action for the NSSearchField to fire. Instead, it just seems to fill-in the autocompletion, then the user has to press enter a second time for the action to fire. Basically, think of starting to type in a URL in Safari, it autocompletes, and pressing enter starts loading the page (firing the action). They don't need to press enter a second time to start loading the page.

Things I've tried without success:

• control:textView:commandSelector:, looking for insertNewline:. It doesn't get fired when they are pressing enter to finish the autocompletion
• Overriding controlTextDidEndEditing:. Same as above

Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

I figured out how to make this work.

You need to override the NSFieldEditor for the NSTextViews.

To provide an overridden version, in the NSWindow's delegate:

- (id)windowWillReturnFieldEditor:(NSWindow *)sender toObject:(id)client
{
    if ([client isKindOfClass:[NSSearchField class]])
    {
        if (!_mlFieldEditor)
        {
            _mlFieldEditor = [[MLFieldEditor alloc] init];
            [_mlFieldEditor setFieldEditor:YES];
        }
        return _mlFieldEditor;
    }
    return nil;
}

_mlFieldEditor is an instance variable. Here is the definition:

@interface MLFieldEditor : NSTextView
@end

@implementation MLFieldEditor


-  (void)insertCompletion:(NSString *)word forPartialWordRange:(NSRange)charRange movement:(NSInteger)movement isFinal:(BOOL)flag
{
    // suppress completion if user types a space
    if (movement == NSRightTextMovement) return;

    // show full replacements
    if (charRange.location != 0) {
        charRange.length += charRange.location;
        charRange.location = 0;
    }

    [super insertCompletion:word forPartialWordRange:charRange movement:movement isFinal:flag];

    if (movement == NSReturnTextMovement)
    {
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:MLSearchFieldAutocompleted object:self userInfo:nil];
    }
}

@end

The key part is the NSReturnTextMovement after the [super insertCompletion...].

The first part will change it so that typing the space key won't perform autocompletion, which was a comment I had made on: How to prevent NSSearchField from overwriting entered strings using the first autocompletion list entry?