NSWIndowController creating Outlets sequence of nib-loading

Question

I'm having big trouble with a nib containing a NSWindowController (as Files Owner) plus ArrayControllers bound to the Files Owner in the nib.

The subclassed NSWindowController seems ok, but the NSObjectControllers, NSArrayControllers and 'custom' NSObjects within the nib are all set to 0x0 -- after a nib load.

All controllers and objects are properly 'bound' in IB. The NSObject subclss has a initWithCoder. Is there further requirements for inits or awake. I should not that ALL inits are essentially doing nothing, but return super. Thats because all referenced objects are set (bound) within the nib.

It seems it has something to do with the sequence of nib loading. And, I was led to believe that IBOutlets were available BEFORE awakeFromNib, following a [super initWithWindowNibName:name];

Based on the docs,

In Mac OS X v10.5 and later, setting an outlet also generates a key-value observing (KVO) notification for any registered observers. These notifications may occur before all inter-object connections are reestablished and definitely occur before any awakeFromNib methods of the objects have been called.

Moreover,

If you need to configure the objects in your nib file further at load time, the most appropriate time to do so is after your nib-loading call returns. At that point, all of the objects are created, initialized, and ready for use.

Am I wrong to believe that self = [super initWithWindowNibName:name] is my nib-loading call?

Some of my awakeFromNib are called only when the Window is shown. ie. [myWindowController showWindow: nil]; My window is opened as a sheet that is making a blocking call, thus it is not easy to access those arraycontrollers after a showWindow.

Answer 1

Am I wrong to believe that self = [super initWithWindowNibName:name] is my nib-loading call?

-[NSWindowController loadWindow] is the method that actually loads the nib. Not that you should ever call it directly; -[NSWindowController window] is the one you should call instead, because the latter invokes -[NSWindowController windowWillLoad] and -[NSWindowController windowDidLoad] as well.

The documentation for NSWindowController states:

Although a window controller can manage a programmatically created window, it usually manages a window in a nib file. The nib file can contain other top-level objects, including other windows, but the window controller’s responsibility is this primary window.

The upshot of this is that nothing in the nib will be loaded until the window in it is loaded.

This is a "gotcha" that used to get me a few times!