Question

I have been trying to figure out how to set the accessoryType to UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark when the cell is selected but am having trouble finding a decent example of this.

If you know how to do this or a good tutorial could you please let me know that would be great.

Answer 1

To restrict the user to just one selection, meaning to create an exclusive list of one choice only, you could follow these steps;

Firstly, have a global index path declared in your .h file to keep track of the already selected cell ->

NSIndexPath *oldIndexPath;

When you create the cells, be sure to set the accessory type to none, so that no cell is selected by default when the table is seen;

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"CellIdentifier"];

    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:@"CallIdentifier"];
        cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;      
    }
    return cell; 
}

Finally, in the didSelectRowAtIndexPath delegate method, add the following code which will remove the checkmark from the already selected cell, and add a checkmark to the newly selected one.

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];

    if (oldIndexPath==nil) { // No selection made yet
        oldIndexPath=indexPath;
        [cell setAccessoryType:UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark];
    }
    else {
        UITableViewCell *formerSelectedcell = [tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:oldIndexPath]; // finding the already selected cell
        [formerSelectedcell setAccessoryType:UITableViewCellAccessoryNone];

        [cell setAccessoryType:UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark]; // 'select' the new cell
        oldIndexPath=indexPath;
    }   
}

Hope this works out! 🙂