Question

I’m trying to create a UITableViewCell that contains a single big button.

I tried what seemed obvious, adding a UIButton to the cell’s contentView, but it didn’t work (the cell is displayed empty). What am I dong wrong?

UITableViewCell *cell = [self.tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"startButtonCell"];
if (cell == nil) {
    cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault 
                                   reuseIdentifier:@"startButtonCell"] autorelease];
    UIButton *btn = [[UIButton alloc] initWithFrame:cell.contentView.bounds];
    [cell.contentView addSubview:btn];
    if (!self.task.isCompleted) {
        btn.titleLabel.text = @"Start!";
    }else{
        btn.titleLabel.text = @"Continue!";
    }
    [btn release];
}

Answer 1

Try the following:

UIButton *btn = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeRoundedRect];
[btn setFrame:cell.contentView.frame];
[btn setTitle:@"Button Title" forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[cell.contentView addSubview:btn];

I am by far no expert but I think the problem with your solution is that by default the button style of UIButton is UIButtonTypeCustom, which is invisible because it is not customized yet. If I change the code above from

UIButton *btn = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeRoundedRect];

to

UIButton *btn = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];

I get get the same result you do. No Button visible. If you would like to use UIButtonTypeCustom you would have do do some customization. Adding a background image to your button for example.