Assertion failure in dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:forIndexPath:

Question

So I was making an rss reader for my school and finished the code. I ran the test and it gave me that error. Here is the code it's referring to:

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView 
         cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";
    UITableViewCell *cell = 
     [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier 
                                     forIndexPath:indexPath];
    if (cell == nil) {

        cell = 
         [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleSubtitle  
                                reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier];

    }

here's the error in the output:

2012-10-04 20:13:05.356 Reader[4390:c07] * Assertion failure in -[UITableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:forIndexPath:], /SourceCache/UIKit_Sim/UIKit-2372/UITableView.m:4460 2012-10-04 20:13:05.357 Reader[4390:c07] * Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'unable to dequeue a cell with identifier Cell - must register a nib or a class for the identifier or connect a prototype cell in a storyboard' * First throw call stack: (0x1c91012 0x10cee7e 0x1c90e78 0xb64f35 0xc7d14 0x39ff 0xd0f4b 0xd101f 0xb980b 0xca19b 0x6692d 0x10e26b0 0x228dfc0 0x228233c 0x228deaf 0x1058cd 0x4e1a6 0x4ccbf 0x4cbd9 0x4be34 0x4bc6e 0x4ca29 0x4f922 0xf9fec 0x46bc4 0x47311 0x2cf3 0x137b7 0x13da7 0x14fab 0x26315 0x2724b 0x18cf8 0x1becdf9 0x1becad0 0x1c06bf5 0x1c06962 0x1c37bb6 0x1c36f44 0x1c36e1b 0x147da 0x1665c 0x2a02 0x2935) libc++abi.dylib: terminate called throwing an exception

and here's the code it shows in the error screen:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    @autoreleasepool {
        return UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, NSStringFromClass([AppDelegate class]));
    }
}

please help!

Answer 1

You're using the dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:forIndexPath: method. The documentation for that method says this:

Important: You must register a class or nib file using the registerNib:forCellReuseIdentifier: or registerClass:forCellReuseIdentifier: method before calling this method.

You didn't register a nib or a class for the reuse identifier "Cell".

Looking at your code, you seem to expect the dequeue method to return nil if it doesn't have a cell to give you. You need to use the dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier: for that behavior:

UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];

Notice that dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier: and dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:forIndexPath: are different methods. See doc for the former and the latter.

If you want to understand why you'd want to ever use dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:forIndexPath:, check out this Q&A.