Question

I need to return cell in tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: only when some condition is true,for example:

if (condition == true)
return nil;
else
return cell;

Returning nil gives me an error.

Answer 1

You’ll need to do a little more to conditionally have a cell in a UITableView.

Let’s assume you have 3 cells, and the first one is conditional. The first thing you need to do make your table have either 2 or 3 cells based on this condition:

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
    if(condition) {
        return 3;
    } else {
        return 2;
    }
}

Next you can return the actual cell.

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    if(condition) {
        if(indexPath.row == 0) {
            //create and return conditional cell
        } else {
            //create and return normal cell
        }
    } else {
        //create and return normal cell
    }
}

And voila!

PS: (This is assuming everything is done in a single section. If you need to break that out into multiple sections we can get into that as well).