Question

Is it possible to set up a UITableView/UITableViewController with static data? Or is it always required to fill out the UITableViewDataSource protocol and return individual entries and create cells on demand?

In this case, what I’d like to do is just use a quick tableview controller to have a user pick from a short list of known values that won’t change. It seems like a lot of extra work to have to fill out all those functions for static data.

Answer 1

By “static data” do you mean hard coded rather than from a data source?

Either way the process is the same. You have to return cells via cellAtIndexPath: You can do this quite simply with an “if block” assuming all you want is a couple of hard coded rows.

For example:

// How many sections in the table? Hard coded to 1 here
- (NSInteger) numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView {
  return 1;
}

// How many rows in the table? Hard coded to 2 here
- (NSInteger) tableView: (UITableView *) tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
  return 2;
}

// Method for returning data from anywhere, even hard coded
// Notice how we use row and section, these tell us which cell in the table we are returning
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView: (UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath: (NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
  NSInteger row = [indexPath row];
  NSInteger section = [indexPath section];

  // Dequeue a cell using a common ID string of your choosing
  UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"myCellID"];

  // Return cells with data/labels/pretty colors here
  if (row == 0)
  {
    cell.textLabel.text = @"I can haz cheezburger";
  }
  else if (row == 1)
  {
    cell.textLabel.text = @"I hate lol catz";
  }

  // Pretty em up here if you like
  cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleGray;
  cell.textLabel.lineBreakMode = UILineBreakModeWordWrap;
  return cell;  
}

It’s pretty straightforward once you know the Cocoa way, but it’s not “simple”.