Question

Is it possible to keep the contentView.frame always the same, regardless of tableView.editing? I already tried to override layoutSubviews and willTransitionToState but those options fizzled out too. I can’t seem to be able to change the width of the contentView. Or maybe my approach ist just plain impossible …
Maybe there is another way to solve this.

The behaviour I want to achieve is the following: I want the standard textLabel of a UITableViewCell to be always indented and not change position when the tableView enters editing mode. The problem I will probably face is that the behaviour of the detailTextLabel will have to be corrected (e.g. truncation of text if textLabelcontent is too long). The reason why I don’t want to implement my own UILabelis because a custom subviews will decrease the scrolling performance by a significant amount.

I hope that anyone already implemented something like this in their UITableViewand could show me a solution to this tedious problem. Thanks in advance!

EDIT: I’m dealing with a UITableView in plain and not grouped style.

Answer 1

Luckily, iOS is perfectly equipped to keep whatever value constant.

This (ugly) piece of code will keep the frame fixed to whatever value has origin.x==0. This is easily adapted to your particular needs.

// put this in your UITableViewCell subclass
-(void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath ofObject:(id)object change:(NSDictionary *)change context:(void *)context
{
    NSLog(@"observed value for kp %@ changed: %@",keyPath,change);
    if ( [keyPath isEqual:@"frame"] && object == self.contentView )
    {
        CGRect newFrame = self.contentView.frame;
        CGRect oldFrame = [[change objectForKey:NSKeyValueChangeOldKey] CGRectValue];
        NSLog(@"frame old: %@  new: %@",NSStringFromCGRect(oldFrame),NSStringFromCGRect(newFrame));

        if ( newFrame.origin.x != 0 ) self.contentView.frame = oldFrame;
    }
}

// add the cell as an observer for frame changes, somewhere in initialization:
[self.contentView addObserver:self forKeyPath:@"frame" options:NSKeyValueObservingOptionOld context:nil];

// IMPORTANT: remove the cell as an observer in -dealloc:
[self.contentView removeObserver:self forKeyPath:@"frame"];

This will only allow the frame to change to values with an origin.x==0. Remove the NSLog() lines for Release builds.

I have tested this for a few minutes and haven’t seen any side effect.