Question

I have subclassed UITableViewCell for a custom cell view along the lines as follows:

@interface CustomCell : UITableViewCell

@property (nonatomic, strong) IBOutlet UILabel *customTextLabel;

@end

Is there a way to get rid of the default “textLabel” such that the following code will fail:

CustomCell *cell = (CustomCell *)[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"CustomCell"];

[cell.textLabel setText:@"whee"];

I want to restrict usage such that the only text label that can be set is my “customTextLabel”.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

You can override the getter for text label returning (a) your label or (b) nil:

-(UILabel*) textLabel {
    return myLabel; // or perhaps return nil
}

This will prevent users of your derived class from accessing the label of the base cell type.