Question

I’ve got a subclass of UITableViewCell. My subclass contains several UILabels. I want my subclass to initialize these labels to some default settings that applies to every table view cell of mine.

I read that I should be using initWithCoder for this. My initWithCoder function is being called, and I can step through each line in my function and it appears to go through the motions. When I run my application I do not see any of the properties being applied, though. Most noticeably, the font is not being changed. I just don’t think any of the properties that I’m modifying on my UILabels are actually being saved, or displayed.

I’m using this subclass in conjunction with a Storyboard. I know my changes will not be reflected on the Storyboard, but they’re also not being reflected when the application runs – despite my code being executed.

Edit: I wanted to mention that prior to trying to override initWithCoder, I had an instance method in these subclasses that I’d run this logic in. I would just call that instance method inside of cellForRowAtIndexPath. This method was working, but I thought it’d be handy to have this logic in this subclass occur automatically.

Any ideas? My code is below:

#import "ThreadListCell.h"

@implementation ThreadListCell

- (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder {

    if ((self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder])) {

        // adjust the font settings of the title
        self.title.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"SourceSansPro-Black" size:16];
        self.title.textColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.267f alpha:1.0f];

        // adjust the font settings of the subtitle
        self.text.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"SourceSansPro-Light" size:14];
        self.text.textColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.267f alpha:0.9f];
        self.text.textColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:1 green:0 blue:0 alpha:1];

        // adjust the font settings of the location
        self.location.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"SourceSansPro-Light" size:8];
        self.location.textColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.267f alpha:0.9f];

        // adjust the UILabel settings of the title
        self.title.numberOfLines = 0;
        self.title.lineBreakMode = UILineBreakModeTailTruncation;

        // adjust the UILabel settings of the subtitle
        self.text.numberOfLines = 0;
        self.text.lineBreakMode = UILineBreakModeTailTruncation;

        // adjust the UILabel settings of the location
        self.location.numberOfLines = 0;
        self.location.lineBreakMode = UILineBreakModeTailTruncation;
        self.location.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentRight;

    }

    return self;

}

@end

And the header:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface ThreadListCell : UITableViewCell

@property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UILabel *text;
@property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UILabel *title;
@property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UILabel *location;

@end

Answer 1

None of your IBOutlets is set when you get the message – you need to use “awakeFromNib” or “viewDidLoad” – something like that – to access your outlets. That said, you can set other non-outlet stuff in the initWithCoder.