Question

I am currently trying to load my custom table view cell from its own nib file instead of drawing the cell in code. It goes fine besides from the fact that I do not understand how I can make my table view contain more than one instance of my custom table cell. Let’s see if I can explain my issue…

In my table view controller I have something like IBOutlet MyFancyCell *fancyCell; and then I make the controller the owner of MyFancyCell.xib and connects the outlet in the controller to the table cell view in Interface Builder. Having

[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"MyFancyCell" owner:self options:nil];

in my controller fancyCell ends up pointing to an instance of my fancy custom table view cell.

Now, what if I want two of those fancy cells in my table view?

Answer 1

You just use that IBOutlet temporarily to load your custom cell. In your cellForRowAtIndexPathyou do something like this:

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"MyFancyCell";

    MyFancyCell *cell = (MyFancyCell *)[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    if (cell == nil) {
        [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"MyFancyCell" owner:self options:nil];
        cell = fancyCell;
        self.fancyCell = nil;
    }

    // configure cell...

    return cell;
}