How do I override layout of NSTableHeaderView?

Question

I am trying to produce a custom header for my NSTableView. I would like to change the font of the header text and remove the borders and vertical separators.

My current top and bottom header is shown below:

Does anyone know how do I do this please?

UPDATE: After applying the fix the header now looks as I intended:

Answer 1

Actually both the answers from mprudhom and Pronto contributed nicely to the final fix. Many thanks to both of you.

I thought I'd post my final answer so anyone following on can see how I fixed it.

I couldn't use mprudhom's code alone as my table only had a NSTableHeaderView and no TableHeaderCells. Fortunately Pronto came to the rescue on that:

class MyTable: NSTableView, NSTableViewDataSource, NSTableViewDelegate
{
    override func tableView(tableView: NSTableView, viewForTableColumn tableColumn: NSTableColumn?, row: Int) -> NSView?
    {
        tableColumn!.headerCell = MyTableHeaderCell(textCell: tableColumn!.identifier)
    }
}

I used the NSTableHeaderCell code directly from mprudhom:

final class MyTableHeaderCell : NSTableHeaderCell
{
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder)
    {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }

    override init(textCell: String)
    {
        super.init(textCell: textCell)
        self.font = NSFont.boldSystemFontOfSize(14)
    }

    override func drawWithFrame(cellFrame: NSRect, inView controlView: NSView)
    {
        //super.drawWithFrame(cellFrame, inView: controlView)//, since that is what draws borders
        self.drawInteriorWithFrame(cellFrame, inView: controlView)
    }

    override func drawInteriorWithFrame(cellFrame: NSRect, inView controlView: NSView)
    {
        let titleRect = self.titleRectForBounds(cellFrame)
        self.attributedStringValue.drawInRect(titleRect)
    }
}

Once these two methods were implemented, I had one last problem in that the NSTableHeaderView was drawn without the border as required but did have a grey background. So I overrode the NSTableHeaderView class with this method:

class ForecastHeaderView : NSTableHeaderView
{
    required init?(coder: NSCoder)
    {
        super.init(coder: coder)
    }

    override init(frame frameRect: NSRect) 
    {
        super.init(frame: frameRect)
        self.wantsLayer = true
    }

    override func drawLayer(layer: CALayer, inContext ctx: CGContext)
    {
        super.drawLayer(layer, inContext: ctx)
        layer.backgroundColor = CGColorCreateGenericGray(1.0, 1.0)
    }
}

Answer 2

You will need to take over the drawing yourself by subclassing NSTableHeaderCell, like so:

final class CustomTableHeaderCell : NSTableHeaderCell {
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }

    override init(textCell: String) {
        super.init(textCell: textCell)
        self.font = NSFont.boldSystemFontOfSize(20)
    }

    override func drawWithFrame(cellFrame: NSRect, inView controlView: NSView) {
        // skip super.drawWithFrame(), since that is what draws borders
        self.drawInteriorWithFrame(cellFrame, inView: controlView)
    }

    override func drawInteriorWithFrame(cellFrame: NSRect, inView controlView: NSView) {
        let titleRect = self.titleRectForBounds(cellFrame)
        self.attributedStringValue.drawInRect(titleRect)
    }
}

If you are setting up the table programmatically, you would do it like:

let col = NSTableColumn(identifier: id)
col.headerCell = CustomTableHeaderCell(textCell: title)
col.title = title
self.dataTableView.addTableColumn(col)

Otherwise, you should be able to just set the name of your class to your subclass' name in Interface Builder.

Answer 3

One way to do it, in your NSTableViewDelegate's viewForTableColumn -function:

if tableColumn!.identifier == "description" {
    let cell = NSTableHeaderCell()
    cell.title = "New Title"
    cell.backgroundColor = NSColor.redColor()
    cell.drawsBackground = true
    cell.bordered = false
    cell.font = NSFont(name: "Helvetica", size: 16)
    tableColumn!.headerCell = cell
}

Answer 4

The above answers works also directly you can use in viewDidLoad

override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()   
        tableView.tableColumns.forEach { (column) in
                column.headerCell.backgroundColor = NSColor.white
                column.headerCell.drawsBackground = true
                column.headerCell.isBordered = false
                column.headerCell.attributedStringValue = NSAttributedString(string: column.title, attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key.font: NSFont.systemFont(ofSize: 13)])
              }
}

Answer 5

What seems to work in macOS 11:

1. Set NSTableHeaderCell background

    func tableView(_ tableView: NSTableView, viewFor tableColumn: NSTableColumn?, row: Int) -> NSView? {
    tableColumn?.headerCell.drawsBackground = true
    tableColumn?.headerCell.backgroundColor = .orange
    ...
   

2. Set NSTableView style in IB to Full Width