Question

I want to be able to swipe left or right anywhere in a table view cell to erase the cell of with animation without showing the delete button. How can I do this?

Answer 1

I have not tried and implemented this, but I’ll give it a shot. First, create a custom UITableViewCell, and let it have 2 properties that you can use

1. A reference to the tableView it is being used in.
2. An indexPath to find the cell in the tableView.(Note, this needs to be updated everytime you delete a cell for all cells where this changes)

In your cellForRowAtIndexPath:, where you create the custom cell, set these properties. Also add a UISwipeGestureRecognizer to the cell

cell.tableView=tableView;
cell.indexPath=indexPath;
UISwipeGestureRecognizer *swipeGestureRecognizer=[[UISwipeGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(deleteCell:)];
[cell addGestureRecognizer:swipeGestureRecognizer];
[swipeGestureRecognizer release];

Make sure that the gesture only receives horizontal swipes.

-(BOOL) gestureRecognizer:(UIGestureRecognizer *)gestureRecognizer shouldReceiveTouch:(UITouch *)touch
{
    if([[gestureRecognizer view] isKindOfClass:[UITableViewCell class]]&&
       ((UISwipeGestureRecognizer*)gestureRecognizer.direction==UISwipeGestureRecognizerDirectionLeft
        ||(UISwipeGestureRecognizer*)gestureRecognizer.direction==UISwipeGestureRecognizerDirectionRight)) return YES;
}

In your deleteCell:

-(void) deleteCell:(UIGestureRecognizer*)gestureRec
{
    UIGestureRecognizer *swipeGestureRecognizer=(UISwipeGestureRecognizer*)gestureRec;
    CustomCell *cell=[swipeGestureRecognizer view];
    UITableView *tableView=cell.tableView;
    NSIndexPath *indexPath=cell.indexPath;
    //you can now use these two to perform delete operation
}