Question

I’m looking at Apple’s “AdvancedTableViewCells” sample project, and in looking at the RootViewController, I noticed the nib loading for the IndividualSubviewsBasedApplicationCell. I was wondering about that nib loading… what is it loading into? There is no handle/variable. I understand the lines below where cell is assigned to the view via the IBOutlet, but I don’t understand the line: [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"IndividualSubviewsBasedApplicationCell" owner:self options:nil];

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"ApplicationCell";

    ApplicationCell *cell = (ApplicationCell *)[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];

    if (cell == nil) {

#if USE_INDIVIDUAL_SUBVIEWS_CELL
        [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"IndividualSubviewsBasedApplicationCell" owner:self options:nil];
        cell = tmpCell;
        self.tmpCell = nil;

Answer 1

See Jeff LaMarche’s article Table View Cells in Interface Builder – the Apple Way™.

In the NIB file IndividualSubviewsBasedApplicationCell, “File’s Owner” is set to RootViewController, and the custom UITableViewCell is connected to the tmpCell IBOutlet of RootViewController.

In the line:

[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"IndividualSubviewsBasedApplicationCell" owner:self options:nil];

…the bundle loader loads the NIB file and connects all the outlets. Once it has done this, the tmpCell IBOutlet now points to our custom UITableViewCell.