Cocoa：Inline Arrays of NSSortDescriptors

Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running (by me) is now available from O'Reilly.

Inline Arrays of NSSortDescriptors

NSSortDescriptor is Cocoa's standard class for sorting an NSTableView (or NSArray) by multiple criteria. Sort descriptors are created automatically when the user clicks on a column, but there are a number of situations where you need to create them in code. The API is really simple but the process of getting these things into the table is fairly verbose. Here's a clean and simple way to automate the process, using a category with varargs as input:


 @interface NSSortDescriptor (CDCExtensions)
 
 + (NSArray *) ascendingDescriptorsForKeys: (NSString *)firstKey,...;
 
 @end

You can use it like this:


 NSArray *descriptors = [NSSortDescriptor
              ascendingDescriptorsForKeys: @"subject", @"date", nil];
         
 [tableView setSortDescriptors: descriptors];

Or this:


 NSArray *descriptors = [NSSortDescriptor
              ascendingDescriptorsForKeys: @"subject", @"date", nil];
         
 NSArray *sorted = [someArray sortedArrayUsingDescriptors: descriptors];

Grab zip file with the the .h and .m files. Here's the implementation (formatting adjusted for site):


 @implementation  NSSortDescriptor (CDCAdditions)
 
 + (NSArray *) ascendingDescriptorsForKeys: (NSString *)firstKey,...
 {    
   id returnArray   = [[NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity: 5] retain];
   va_list           keyList;
     
   NSString          * oneKey;
   NSSortDescriptor  * oneDescriptor;
   
   if (firstKey)
   {
     oneDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey: firstKey
                                                 ascending: YES];
     [returnArray addObject: oneDescriptor];
     [oneDescriptor release];
     
     va_start (keyList, firstKey);
     
     while (oneKey = va_arg(keyList, NSString *))
     {
       oneDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey: oneKey
                                                   ascending: YES];
       [returnArray addObject: oneDescriptor];
       [oneDescriptor release];
     }
     
     va_end (keyList);
   }
   
   return [returnArray autorelease];
   
 }
 
 @end

Inline Arrays of NSSortDescriptors
Posted Mar 15, 2005 — 3 comments below

Hayssam — Mar 15, 05 114

Hi!

I think there might be a typo in your
> NSSortDescriptor * descriptor;
as "descriptor" is never used while "OneDescriptor" is used but not declared.

Thanks for sharing this snippet !

Scott Stevenson — Mar 16, 05 115

Fixed, thanks. I had tweaked a few things to fit the code on the page, and this was an artifact of that. The code in the zip file was fine, though.

Scott Stevenson — Mar 16, 05 116

Update: I added some discussion about sorting NSArrays.

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