How to attach a custom menu to the main view in a OS X desktop app in Swift

Question

Given the following GitHub project:

https://github.com/kellyjanderson/swift-custom-menue

How do I link the menu item Custom >> Custom Action, to the function customAction in the ViewController?

Answer 1

Define an outlet of your menu item in AppDelegate

@IBOutlet weak var customMenuItem: NSMenuItem!

In your view controller first get the instance of AppDelegate:

 let appDelegate = NSApplication.sharedApplication().delegate as! AppDelegate

Get the instance of the menu item and then bind an IBAction to it:

appDelegate.customMenuItem.action = #selector(customAction(_:))

For e.g., you want to bind an action customAction to your menu item. You can add the following code in viewDidLoad

 override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
         let appDelegate = NSApplication.sharedApplication().delegate as! AppDelegate
         print(appDelegate.customMenuItem)
        appDelegate.customMenuItem.action = #selector(customAction(_:))
    }

And then define the IBAction

 func customAction(sender: NSMenuItem){
        print("Custom Menu Item clicked")
    }

Output:

<NSMenuItem: 0x6080000a0720 Custom Action>
Custom Menu Item clicked