Drag Operations

Only one of the NSDraggingSource methods needs to be implemented: draggingSourceOperationMaskForLocal:. This method declares what types of operations the source allows to be performed. Table 1 lists the available drag operations. (In Java, the constants are defined in the NSDraggingInfo namespace and lack the NS prefix.) The method should return a bitwise-OR combination of the allowed types or NSDragOperationNone if no operations are allowed.

The allowed operations may differ if the drag is occurring entirely within your application or between your application and another. The flag passed to draggingSourceOperationMaskForLocal: indicates whether it is a local, or internal, drag.

The user can press modifier keys to further select which operation to perform. If the control, option, or command key is pressed, the source’s operation mask is filtered to only contain the operations given in Table 2. To prevent modifiers from altering the mask, your dragging source should implement ignoreModifierKeysWhileDragging and return YES.

Drag Messages

During the course of the drag, the source object is sent a series of messages to notify it of the status of the drag operation. At the very beginning of the drag, the source is sent the message draggedImage:beganAt:. Each time the dragged image moves, the source is sent a draggedImage:movedTo: message. Finally, when the user has released the mouse button and the destination has either performed the drop operation or rejected it, the source is sent a draggedImage:endedAt:operation: message. The operation argument is the drag operation the destination performed or NSDragOperationNone if the drag failed. (In Java, these method names are startedDraggingImage, movedDraggingImage, and finishedDraggingImage.)

The dragging source generally does not need to implement any of these methods. If you are going to support the NSDragOperationMove or NSDragOperationDelete operations, however, you do need to implement draggedImage:endedAt:operation: to remove the dragged data from the source. (Note that an NSDragOperationDelete operation is requested when dragging any object to the Trash icon in the dock.)

The Dragged Image

The image that is dragged in a dragging session is simply an image that represents the data on the pasteboard. Although a dragging destination can access the image, its primary concern is with the pasteboard data that the image represents—the dragging operation that a destination ultimately performs is on the pasteboard data, not on the image itself.

When the dragging session is started by using the NSView method dragFile:fromRect:slideBack:event:, NSView uses the file’s Finder icon for the image. For your own custom drags, you need to construct a suitable image. Possibilities include a semi-transparent snapshot of the displayed data, such as the selected section of text, or a symbolic representation of the data, such as a table icon when dragging spreadsheet data.