Question

I have made a view in the application that shows a UITableView. It will be full of results (obviously) almost all the time, however when it does not have any results I want to show another view that inform the user about how he/she could populate the table.

I want to design that view in the interfacebuilder. I will have to check in the code whether the datasource is empty or not to toggle between the two different nibs. How do I instantiate and configure a view made in Interfacebuilder?

Answer 1

The easies way to do this is by adding the view in xib normally and make it visible
Design your both views, the table view and the other view, give the tableView a tag of 111 for example and give the otherview another tag 222 for example

Now in viewDidLoad

Get both the views

UIView *noDataView = [self.view viewWithTag:222];
UITableView *tableView = [self.view viewWithTag:111];
//Hide both of them or only the noDataView until you know if you have data from the dataSource or not

Check for your data source

//hasElements do you have any element to show?
if(hasElements)
{
    noDatView.hidden = YES;
    tableView.hidden = NO;
}
else
{
    noDatView.hidden = NO;
    tableView.hidden = YES;
}