Question

I would like to set the selected row in a UITableView to the refresh control. I am doing this, because I have a refresh control at the top of my UITableView, and when I am loading data (and they have not actually caused it by pulling it down), I would like the activity indicator view to be visible (that is part of the refresh control).

Right now, what I do is set the refresh control to the “refreshing state” (has the spinning activity indicator).

[self.refreshControl beginRefreshing];

This works great, but the only problem is, is that they cannot see it unless the pull up because it’s default value at row 1 (index 0), so it is hidden.

Note: There are 0 items (and always will be) in the UITableView while this is happening.

For example, if I go:

[self.tableView selectRowAtIndexPath:0 animated:YES scrollPosition:UITableViewScrollPositionTop];

It will set the position of the selected item to the first row, but I want to make it show the refresh control, so I guess possibly doing:

[self.tableView selectRowAtIndexPath:-1 animated:YES scrollPosition:UITableViewScrollPositionTop];

would work (as it’s 1 index below the first item), but of course that won’t compiler.

Answer 1

Because UITableView is a subclass of UIScrollView, you could show the refresh controller above the first row by setting the tableView’s contentOffset. For example, if your refresh control’s height is 100 you could animate the refresh control into view.

[self.tableView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, -100) animated:YES];

Or to simply show it without any animation or implement your own animation:

self.tableView.contentOffest = CGPointMake(0, -100);

You can then set it back to 0 once your refreshing is complete and you want to hide the control.

Documentation link here