Button added via Interface Builder sending Javascript Events?

[gobijan]

Button added via Interface Builder sending Javascript Events?

[rawcreative]

Are you wanting it to emit a js event or are you wanting it to actually do something (like interact with the MG Api)? Yes in both cases but the approach would be different depending on what you wanted the button to actually do.

On Jun 9, 2014, at 3:53 PM, Bijan [email protected] wrote:

Hey is it possible to make a Button that was added via IB to emit a javascript signal?
Can this be done and if so how?

Cheers Bijan

PS: MacGap2 is great!

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[gobijan]

I thought about emitting an event that an app could listen for.
This way the logic what should be done could be coded in javascript. What do you think? Which approach is easier for non obj-c people?

[rawcreative]

Kinda depends on the task really.. the downside to using a button in IB (or any native control really), is that you can't add/configure them on the fly. So it's not something we could make an API for or anything like that because it requires using IB and linking in the code via IBActions. It's not hard to do, it just has to be done before the app is built/compiled.

[gobijan]

How would this be done?
Let's say one simply adds a button on the top in the MainWindow.xib like so:

How would I emit a "buttonHasBeenClicked" event to the javascript scope of my app? Is that possible?

[rawcreative]

If you just want to emit an event when the button is clicked, here's the steps:

1. Open MainWindow.xib in IB and add your button
2. Click the Assistant editor button in the top right of the Xcode toolbar ( second one from the left). You should now have a split view, IB on the left, code for WindowController.m on the right.
3. Click on/Select the button you added to interface builder, hold the control key and drag to an empty spot in WindowController.m. A popover will show asking for a name for your action, put whatever you want in there and click 'Connect'.
4. In the method that was added to the WindowController.m file, add the following line, and replace the myEvent with whatever you want your event name to be.
5. That's it.

You need to make sure that any buttons you're adding don't overlay the actual webview, otherwise you will run into issues, so you'll need to adjust the webview's size in IB. The gif below is just for illustrative purposes.

[rawcreative]

Sorry never added gave ya the actual event code, it's

[Event triggerEvent:@"myEvent" forWebView:webView];

There's other variations of the event code if you need to pass data or specify an element that the event will be triggered on, default is: document.

[gobijan]

Whoa! That's a lot easier than I expected! Thanks for detailed explanation! :) 👍

[rawcreative]

No problem..

Another solution might be to use a toolbar, that way you don't have to worry about the webview getting in the way or having to move anything around. It's also something that an API could be made for. It works almost the exact same way the Status Bar api works. That way you could make your own buttons and do whatever you'd like to do with it.

[gobijan]

Yeah that was my original intention.
A button might be trivial but for example in my kanban app I have a dropdown that is populated by angularjs and also a search box that is bound via angularjs, too.

So a two way communication would be needed and parameters needed to be passed from app javascript realm to xcode obj-c interface realm.

This might be a little too painful to implement via api, right?

[rawcreative]

The buttons and drop downs aren’t hard, but for the search field to work you’d have to have an obj-c object representation of whatever you’re searching, in other words, the search would have to be handled via obj-c code.

On Jun 9, 2014, at 4:51 PM, Bijan [email protected] wrote:

Yeah that was my original intention.
A button might be trivial but for example in my kanban app I have a dropdown that is populated by angularjs and also a search box that is bound via angularjs, too.

So a two way communication would be needed and parameters needed to be passed from app javascript realm to xcode obj-c interface realm.

This might be a little too painful to implement via api, right?

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[rawcreative]

Off-topic, but how’d you get a file size of 29MB using node-webkit?

On Jun 9, 2014, at 4:51 PM, Bijan [email protected] wrote:

Yeah that was my original intention.
A button might be trivial but for example in my kanban app I have a dropdown that is populated by angularjs and also a search box that is bound via angularjs, too.

So a two way communication would be needed and parameters needed to be passed from app javascript realm to xcode obj-c interface realm.

This might be a little too painful to implement via api, right?

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[gobijan]

Hmm maybe for the search it would be enough to be able to get and set the text in the box via JS...

I ripped off everything I didn't need form node-webkit :D Just kidding: The App Store lists the file size that has to be downloaded and they pack their apps into compressed pkg files. So it's just the compression.

[jeff-h]

+1 for a toolbar API :) I currently hand-coded mine in ObjC and it was partially why I added NSUserDefaults — but a better communication method for JS-to-toolbar-items would be great.

[jeff-h]

@tschundeee Any chance you could turn the best parts of this issue into a doc page?

[perfaram]

As this issue isn't closed, I allow myself to ask help for my problem :
Is it possible - and if so, how - to access the webView object from the App delegate ?

[rawcreative]

@perfaram self.windowController.webView

[perfaram]

Thanks ! In the meantime, I had to use a little workaround (I created another IBOutlet in the AppDelegate, referencing the WebView)