Clickable links within a custom NSCell

Question

I have a custom NSCell with various elements inside of it (images, various text pieces) and one of those text blocks may have various clickable links inside of it. I have my NSAttributedString correctly identifying the links and coloring them blue however I can't figure out how to get the cursor to turn into a hand and allow a user to actually click on them.

Right now I have my attributed string drawn right to the cell which obviously isn't clickable, but I'm not sure how to add it any other way since NSCell doesn't inherit from NSView. Normally I'd just add an NSTextField as a subview but I can't do it like that in this case.

Any thoughts?

Ira Cooke Ira Cooke · Accepted Answer · 2009-09-09T08:24:41

The only solution I can think of is via manual hit testing and mouse tracking within your NSCell. The hardest part (which I don't have the answer to) is how to determine the rect of the link text ... hopefully someone can answer that?

Once you know the rect of the url text it's possible to implement the clicking action by implementing hitTestForEvent. I think you'd do it something like this;

// If the event is a mouse down event and the point is inside the rect trigger the url 
- (NSUInteger)hitTestForEvent:(NSEvent *)event inRect:(NSRect)frame ofView:(NSView *)controlView {
   NSPoint point = [controlView convertPoint:[event locationInWindow] fromView:nil];
// Check that the point is over the url region
   if (NSPointInRect(point, urlFrame)) {
       // If event is mousedown activate url
       // Insert code here to activate url
       return NSCellHitTrackableArea;
   } else {
    return [super hitTestForEvent:event inRect:frame ofView:controlView];
   }
}

Clickable links within a custom NSCell

2 Answers