Question

I have a UITableView, to which I add cells via UIButton. On creation the cell gets its textLabel & detailTextLabel from 2 arrays. However, if an item with the same Title already exists in the table, I want to change the detailTextLabel.text of the existing cell without adding a new cell.

So is there a way to update the detailText of a certain UITableViewCell when it was already created with some value?

Maybe I should just remove the old one and add new?

Answer 1

Creating of a UITableView cell should be just that, creation and not population of data, since we re use cells we should always assume the cell data is stale and needs a refresh, therefore you should always have a way to reset the values of the cells, if you have a custom cell you should expose the controls you are using and set their values accordingly in cellForRowAtIndexPath, if you require to change a cell you should either change the data source values and reload the cell via - (void)reloadRowsAtIndexPaths:(NSArray *)indexPaths withRowAnimation:(UITableViewRowAnimation)animation , or grab a hold of the cell with cellForRowAtIndexPath and change the values accordigly… my point is no need to recreate the cell..