Question

I want to use UITableViewRowAnimation with :reloadData.

Before i used that example for Table loading (I found that in some ios dev guide):

for (NSDictionary *entry in [dl reverseObjectEnumerator]) {
        int insertIdx = 0;

        [_allEntries insertObject:entry atIndex:insertIdx];
        [self.tableView insertRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:[NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:insertIdx inSection:0]]
                              withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationRight];

    }   

But that way seems to be really slow on big data, so how to fast load tableviews with animation?

Answer 1

You should take a look at beginUpdates and endUpdates. Within these two commands you can update/remove/insert rows and have them animated for you. It’s also much more efficient than using reloadData.

More on this topic here: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UITableView_Class/Reference/Reference.html

Quick excerpt:

• (void)beginUpdates

Call this method if you want subsequent insertions, deletion, and
selection operations (for example, cellForRowAtIndexPath: and
indexPathsForVisibleRows) to be animated simultaneously. This group of
methods must conclude with an invocation of endUpdates. These method
pairs can be nested. If you do not make the insertion, deletion, and
selection calls inside this block, table attributes such as row count
might become invalid. You should not call reloadData within the group;
if you call this method within the group, you will need to perform any
animations yourself.