Question

In a tableview I’m displaying local soccer matches from an NSMutableArray that are planned for this week. If there are no matches, I want to display a cell saying something like: ‘No matches this week’. I think I have to call for another array, or probably dictionary, if the NSMutableArray of matches is empty, but at this point I have no idea where to start. Any thoughts on how to achieve this?

Answer 1

First, test if there are matches. If there are, tell the tableView there are as many rows as matches. If there aren’t, return 1 row.

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    return [matches count] ? [matches count] : 1;
}

Then, when creating your cell, check if there are matches, if there are, show the appropriate one, if there aren’t, show “No Matches”.

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    // boiler plate cellForRowAtIndexPath stuff here...

    NSUInteger row = [indexPath row];
    cell.textLabel.text = [matches count] ? [matches objectAtIndex:row] : @"No Matches";
    return cell; 
}