Question

I’ve a UITableViewController with a lot of cell, but they all have the same configuration — it’s only the cell content which differs. Here is my tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: method in my UITableViewController:

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

    WSTableViewCell *cell = (WSTableViewCell*)[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = [[WSTableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleSubtitle reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    }

    WSObject *item = [self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath];
    [cell.textLabel setText:item.title];

    return cell;
}

Here is the initWithStyle:reuseIdentifier: in my custom UITableViewCell:

- (id)initWithStyle:(UITableViewCellStyle)style reuseIdentifier:(NSString *)reuseIdentifier
{
    self = [super initWithStyle:style reuseIdentifier:reuseIdentifier];
    if (self) {
        // Initialization code
        [self.textLabel setFont:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:12]];
        [self.textLabel setTextColor:[UIColor colorWithRed:100.0/255.0 green:100.0/255.0 blue:100.0/255.0 alpha:1.0]];
        [self.textLabel setHighlightedTextColor:[UIColor colorWithRed:100.0/255.0 green:100.0/255.0 blue:100.0/255.0 alpha:1.0]];
        [self.textLabel setNumberOfLines:2];
    }
    return self;
}

I’ve just noticed, that this initWithStyle:reuseIdentifier: is called for every cell in the table view, and that the dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier: in the UITableViewController always returns nil. As far as I understand this mechanism with reusable cells, this kind of cell should only be initialized once when I use the same cell identifier. What am I missing here?

Answer 1

The cells are only reused when they are scrolled off-screen. Let’s say one screen shows 11 cells, you will allocate 11 cells which are reused as you scroll.