mouseDown: not firing in WebView subclass

Question

I think this should be quite simple, but I cannot make it work.

I want to detect mouse clicks on a WebView...

I've subclassed WebView, here is the code

#import <AppKit/AppKit.h>
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import <WebKit/WebKit.h>

@interface ResultsWebView : WebView {
}
@end

and

#import "ResultsWebView.h"

@implementation ResultsWebView

- (void)mouseDown:(NSEvent *)theEvent {
    NSLog(@"%@", theEvent);
}

@end

In my xib file, I added a WebView and then changed the class to ResultsWebView.

I've checked in runtime and the object is a ResultsWebView, but the mouseDown event is never called...

What am I missing?

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 03 '15 at 18:00

WebUIDelegate comes into rescue.

Supposing that you have a WebView instance in your NSWindowController:

WebView *aWebView;

You can set your controller as UIDelegate, as follow:

[aWebView setUIDelegate:self];

implementing the following method within your controller, you will have a form of control over mouse click events:

- (void)webView:(WebView *)sender mouseDidMoveOverElement:
(NSDictionary *)elementInformation modifierFlags:(NSUInteger)
modifierFlags
{
if ([[NSApp currentEvent] type] == NSLeftMouseUp)
  NSLog(@"mouseDown event occurred");
}

as a bonus, playing with the elementInformation dictionary you can get additional informations about the DOM element in which click event occurred.

Nice solution ! In my case, I use :[[NSApp currentEvent] type] == NSLeftMouseUp && [[NSApp currentEvent] clickCount == 2 ] to intercept a doubleClick event — Chrstpsln, Jun 11 '15 at 10:08

Patrick · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-21T16:59:38.263

3

The problem is that the message isn't being sent to the WebView. Instead it is being sent to the private WebHTMLView inside your WebView, which actually processes the mouse events.

http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebKit/mac/WebView/WebHTMLView.mm#L3555

You might just want to look into using javascript in your WebView to send the onmousedown events back to your objective-c class.

edited Mar 21 '11 at 16:59

answered Mar 20 '11 at 18:32

Patrick

505
5
9

An alternative is to override -hitTest: and use it to redirect mouse down events to a custom view as suits you. – Mike Abdullah May 15 '12 at 09:33
Or another similar alternative is to simply create an overlay view that notes the event and forwards it to your webView. – uchuugaka Sep 20 '15 at 15:31

score -2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 17 '11 at 17:18

-2

Maybe this helps:

[window setAcceptsMouseMovedEvents:YES];

answered Mar 17 '11 at 17:18

lbrndnr

3,361
2
24
34

No it didn't... I added it to the applicationDidFinishLaunching: app delegate method, but it didn't change anything.But thanks anyway – Marcos Crispino Mar 17 '11 at 17:44

mouseDown: not firing in WebView subclass

3 Answers3

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