Question

I am converting over to iOS 5 and storyboards. When I have a table view with default cell style, everything works fine.

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"MyIdentifierFromStoryboard"];
    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:@"MyIdentifierFromStoryboard"];
    }
    return cell;
}

I have seen examples where the “if (cell == nil)” block is removed. However if I take it out, my app crashes with the message: “UITableView dataSource must return a cell from tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:”. This is not a problem because it works as shown above.

My problem is that I want to use a custom style for the cell and thus cannot use initWithStyle. How do I initialize a custom cell that I have designed on the storyboard?

The old pre-5 app had a nib and class that used something like this, but now I’m using the storyboard.

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    MyCustomTableCell *cell = (MyCustomTableCell *) [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"MyCustomIdentifier"];
    if (cell == nil) {
        NSArray *nib = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"MyCustomTableCell" owner:self options:nil];
        cell = (MyCustomTableCell *) [nib objectAtIndex:0];
    }
    return cell;
}

Answer 1

This way

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";
    CustomCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = [[CustomCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    }

    return cell;
}