Question

I’m creating a custom table that has a button which allows a user to preview a song when pressed. Most of my code works but I haven’t figured out how to pass the player a particular song corresponding to the row in which the button was pressed.

For instance: if I have two rows and #1 says Jay Z and #2 says Red Hot Chili Peppers, I want to press the button in #1 to play Jay and to press the button in #2 for the Peppers. Simple. My code is flawed and no matter which row’s button I press I can only get the same song to play.

I know why that’s happening, but I don’t know how to solve it. I’m just wondering if anyone could hit me with a few lines that could point me in the right direction.

I can’t use didSelectRowAtIndexPath because I want something else to happen when the row itself is selected.

Will I need to create a method for this or is there something I’ve overlooked?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You could also set the tag property of each button you create during tableView: cellForRowAtIndexPath:, then when your buttonTapped event is called, look up the sender and find its tag. The tag property of UIView was provided for just this sort of problem.

If you need more information than that, you could create a UIButton subclass that stores any or all information needed about the associated song. Once again, you set that information during cellForRowAtIndexPath, to be retrieved when the button is tapped.

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath;
{
    // Dequeue a cell and set its usual properties.
    // ...

    UIButton *playButton = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeRoundedRect];
    [playButton addTarget:self action:@selector(playSelected:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
    // This assumes you only have one group of cells, so don't need to worry about the first index.  If you have multiple groups, you'll need more sophisticated indexing to guarantee unique tag numbers.
    [playButton setTag:[indexPath indexAtPosition:1]];

    // ...
    // Also need to set the size and other formatting on the play button, then make it the cell's accessoryView.
    // For more efficiency, don't create a new play button if you dequeued a cell containing one - just set its tag appropriately.
}

- (void) playSelected:(id) sender;
{
    NSLog(@"Play song number %d", [sender tag]);
}