Question

Whats design pattern does UITableView use to populate and what are the benefits?
Is it delegate pattern? Reason I am asking is that it’s not just delegate but the datasource as well.Seems more like along the line with MVC.

I have just gone through a couple of tutorials online their\my code is working but it looks like I am missing the point.I end with all these methods in my main controller.

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation
{
    // Return YES for supported orientations
    return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait);
}


- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView {
    return 1;
}

// Customize the number of rows in the table view.
- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
    return 10;//any number based on datasource size.
}

// Customize the appearance of table view cells.
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";

    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
    }

    // Set up the cell...
    cell.text = [names objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];//names is an array.
    return cell;
}

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
}

It is a view based application . Should it be in a sperate controller.Otherwise it just looks messy and over the top way of doing something simple. I am not at all saying Objective C or apple is wrong but just that I am a beginner and missing the whole point of this delegate and datasource setup.

so to summarise can someone please explain:

1-Whats the benefit of this delegate and datasource setup?
2-Whats the name of this design pattern?
3-Should I have a separate controller (in view based application)?

Answer 1

1. In Apple’s parlance, delegate implements call-back methods which modify the UI behavior, and dataSource provides the data. In a bigger app, you can use two different objects to be the delegate and the data source separately.

2. I’m not familiar with the official terminology, sorry …

3. Depends on the size of your app. Even if you just use appDelegate for everything, it’s recommended to add

    #pragma mark -- table view delegate methods
    ...methods...
    #pragma mark -- table view data source methods
    ...more methods...
   

   so that the method list is shown nicely inside Xcode.