Question

I have a view in iOS (iPhone) that have multiple components, organized in sort of a stack way (one in top of the next). Those are user account properties, some could be blank.

So, I have in my view the components layout like this:

UITextField1 (Name)

UITextField2 (Location)

UITextField3 (Age)

UITextView1 (Bio)

UITableView (user entries).

Some of the fields could be blank. Instead of having blank spaces for the blank fields I would like the next field to move upper.

This is like this question of flowlayout: What is the best/easiest way to create 'flow layout' type layout in iOS.

I can only see two ways of dealing with this:

1. Creating a function that traverse all the UIViews and determines which ones are blank and move the following upper.
2. Creating a UITableView and use different cell heights for cells whose content is empty.

Ideally there would be a component, but I cannot find it (basically some sort of stack/flow layout).

Anyways, I believe that I am going to implement the option #1 above, but I don’t know if there is an “standard” way of accomplishing this (I honestly don’t even know the proper term to look for this feature).

Thanks.

Answer 1

I would lean more in the direction of your second choice by using a UITableView but not the way you propose.

This would be my approach using a UITableView:

1. Create a UITableViewCell (or custom cell) for each one of my
   components and assign a tag value to each, we’ll use these later. You can do this in viewDidLoad.

2. Add code in numberOfRowsInSection to check to see which fields have
   data values present. Return the total count of the number of fields
   with data values

3. In cellForRowAtIndexPath again, check if data exists for that field
   If so, check to see if the cell created in step one has already been created or not (if not, create)
   If not, increment a counter of some sort to increase your tag value and find the next field that has a value. Once found, use that “tag/index” number to “return” the proper cell.

In the end, you have a UITableView only displaying the fields with data.