How to make Pop-Up Menus in Custom Quartz Composer Patches

Making pop-up menus in custom Quartz Composer patches is actually surprisingly easy.

1. Set up a QCIndexPort input. QCIndexPorts provide values from 0 to whatever max you specify using - (void)setMaxIndexValue:(unsigned int)max;.

@interface IndexPortPopUpDemoPatch : QCPatch
{
    QCIndexPort *inputPerson;
}

...

@end

2. Add the “menu” key to the port’s input attributes:

    <key>inputAttributes</key>
    <dict>
        <key>inputPerson</key>
        <dict>
            <key>description</key>
            <string>Person</string>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>Person</string>
            <key>menu</key>
            <array>
                <string>Arthur Dent</string>
                <string>Ford Prefect</string>
                <string>Zaphod Beeblebrox</string>
                <string>Marvin</string>
                <string>Trillian</string>
                <string>Slartibartfast</string>
                <string>Agrajag</string>
                <string>Wonko the Sane</string>
            </array>
        </dict>
    </dict>

3. Make sure you set the max index value in the initWithIdentifier function:

- (id)initWithIdentifier:(id)fp8
{
        id z=[super initWithIdentifier:fp8];

        [inputPerson setMaxIndexValue:7];

        return z;
}

4. Read the value out of the QCIndexPort using - (unsigned int)indexValue;.

Steve Mokris is a developer at Kosada, Inc.