Question

How can I impose additional behavior when in the edit mode of a table view controller. I want to implement a behavior just like the Recents section of Phone application where once Edit is pressed a Clear button appears on the left. How can I do this?

In viewDidLoad I have

self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = self.editButtonItem;

And therefore when Edit button is pressed I get the red circles that gives me the deleting capability which works fine and then

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView commitEditingStyle:(UITableViewCellEditingStyle)editingStyle forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath

is called automatically so the tableview and the underlying data is updated. They all work fine. But if I modify the content of viewDidLoad like the following

self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = self.editButtonItem;
self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem.action = @selector(editPressed:); 

and implement

- (IBAction)editPressed:(UIButton *)sender
{
    NSLog(@"In Edit Pressed");
}

Pressing Edit button will take me to editPressed: but now the normal behavior of Edit for tableview is lost.

Answer 1

When using the default view controller edit button, you can override the method - (void)setEditing:(BOOL)editing animated:(BOOL)animated of the UITableViewController. So, you can put the code in this method, and super it. So, your code could look like this:

- (void)setEditing:(BOOL)editing animated:(BOOL)animated
{
    [super setEditing:editing animated:animated];

    if (myTable.editing)
        self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = additionalButtonItem;
    else
        self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = nil;
}