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 copyi

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?