Question

I have a UITableViewController, I have 4 types of tabular data to present in the same format. Is it better to use one UITableViewController and reload data each time I need to present data, or should I create four UITableViewController instances with its own data source?

Points I considered (which I’m not sure if true):

1. I could save resources by reusing one instance of UITableViewController.

2. However, always calling UITableView’s reloadData before presenting the grid might have impact on performance.

What is the best approach in terms of performance / memory consumption / best practice? Or is there no difference? Hope I am clear.

Update: To be exact, I have popover controllers with a table. I use it to as a “Selection Screen” for various fields in my screens.

The number of fields needing the popover are dynamic, so there can be 4 in one screen or upto 10 in another screen. The dilemma is should I create multiple instances of selection popover (one per field), or should I just use one selection screen and reload the data per field?

Answer 1

Short answer :

It doesn’t really matter unless your data sets are massive (thousands of rows). Whatever is easiest for you is fine!

Long answer :

I would have a different one per data type – it’s probably going to be a slightly more responsive ui if you do (as you pointed out, this comes at the cost of more memory usage).

However, I would use delayed instantiation i.e. only create them the first time they are asked for.

I would also release them if I received a low memory warning notification and they weren’t visible.