Displaying text in a NSScrollView (Swift)

It seems that the earlier beta versions (which featured Swift) of Xcode had some serious issues with this kind of outlets (as you can see here: http://swiftwtf.tumblr.com/post/88387419568/nstextview). However, since Xcode 6 Beta 6 it works.

textFieldOutlet.textStorage.mutableString.setString("Hello w0rld!")

To handle the String, creating an outlet for the textField instead of the scrollView itself is also a better practice.

In the following example, I added the scrollView in the interface builder as my starting point.

The following works if you your scrollView/textView is empty/blank OR if you need to append text in front of what is already in the scrollView/textView. If there is already text in the box, the new text is inserted in front of the existing text.

The documentView is an NSTextView

Swift 4.0

@IBOutlet weak var imageDestinationDirectory: NSScrollView!

...

let destinationText = "Text to display"
imageDestinationDirectory.documentView!.insertText(destinationText)

Here's how to do it programmatically, with auto layout:

class ViewController: NSViewController {
    let scrollView = NSScrollView()
    let textView = NSTextView()

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        textView.maxSize = NSSize(width: CGFloat.greatestFiniteMagnitude, height: CGFloat.greatestFiniteMagnitude)
        textView.autoresizingMask = .width
        textView.isVerticallyResizable = true
        textView.textContainer?.widthTracksTextView = true

        view.addSubview(scrollView)
        scrollView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        scrollView.documentView = textView

        NSLayoutConstraint.activate([
            scrollView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.topAnchor),
            scrollView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.leadingAnchor),
            scrollView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.bottomAnchor),
            scrollView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.trailingAnchor)
        ])
    }
}

Apple's has an article about setting up a text view inside a scroll view programmatically. Text System User Interface Layer Programming Guide: Putting an NSTextView Object in an NSScrollView You should read that for greatest understanding, but here's the code:

NSScrollView *scrollview = [[NSScrollView alloc] initWithFrame:[[theWindow contentView] frame]];
NSSize contentSize = [scrollview contentSize];

[scrollview setBorderType:NSNoBorder];
[scrollview setHasVerticalScroller:YES];
[scrollview setHasHorizontalScroller:NO];
[scrollview setAutoresizingMask:NSViewWidthSizable | NSViewHeightSizable];

theTextView = [[NSTextView alloc] initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(0, 0, contentSize.width, contentSize.height)];
[theTextView setMinSize:NSMakeSize(0.0, contentSize.height)];
[theTextView setMaxSize:NSMakeSize(FLT_MAX, FLT_MAX)];
[theTextView setVerticallyResizable:YES];
[theTextView setHorizontallyResizable:NO];
[theTextView setAutoresizingMask:NSViewWidthSizable];

[[theTextView textContainer] setContainerSize:NSMakeSize(contentSize.width, FLT_MAX)];
[[theTextView textContainer] setWidthTracksTextView:YES];
[scrollview setDocumentView:theTextView];
[theWindow setContentView:scrollview];
[theWindow makeKeyAndOrderFront:nil];
[theWindow makeFirstResponder:theTextView];

You can then set the text of the text view by operating on its textStorage object:

theTextView.textStorage.attributedString = attributedString;