When using "Dynamic Prototypes" for specifying UITableView
content on the storyboard, there is a "Row Height" property that can be set to Custom.
When instantiating cells, this custom row height is not taken into account. This makes sense, since which prototype cell I use is decided by my application code at the time when the cell is to be instantiated. To instantiate all cells when calculating layout would introduce a performance penalty, so I understand why that cannot be done.
The question then, can I somehow retrieve the height given a cell reuse identifier, e.g.
[myTableView heightForCellWithReuseIdentifier:@"MyCellPrototype"];
or something along that line? Or do I have to duplicate the explicit row heights in my application code, with the maintenance burden that follows?
Solved, with the help of @TimothyMoose:
The heights are stored in the cells themselves, which means the only way of getting the heights is to instantiate the prototypes. One way of doing this is to pre-dequeue the cells outside of the normal cell callback method. Here is my small POC, which works:
#import "ViewController.h"
@interface ViewController () {
NSDictionary* heights;
}
@end
@implementation ViewController
- (NSString*) _reusableIdentifierForIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"C%d", indexPath.row];
}
- (CGFloat) tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
if(!heights) {
NSMutableDictionary* hts = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
for(NSString* reusableIdentifier in [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"C0", @"C1", @"C2", nil]) {
CGFloat height = [[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:reusableIdentifier] bounds].size.height;
hts[reusableIdentifier] = [NSNumber numberWithFloat:height];
}
heights = [hts copy];
}
NSString* prototype = [self _reusableIdentifierForIndexPath:indexPath];
return [heights[prototype] floatValue];
}
- (NSInteger) tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
return 3;
}
- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
return 1;
}
- (UITableViewCell*) tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
NSString* prototype = [self _reusableIdentifierForIndexPath:indexPath];
UITableViewCell* cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:prototype];
return cell;
}
@end
For static (non-data-driven) height, you can just dequeue the cell once and store the height:
- (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
static NSNumber *height;
if (!height) {
UITableViewCell *cell = [self.tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"MyCustomCell"];
height = @(cell.bounds.size.height);
}
return [height floatValue];
}
For dynamic (data-driven) height, you can store a prototype cell in the view controller and add a method to the cell's class that calculates the height, taking into account the default content of the prototype instance, such as subview placement, fonts, etc.:
- (MyCustomCell *)prototypeCell
{
if (!_prototypeCell) {
_prototypeCell = [self.tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"MyCustomCell"];
}
return _prototypeCell;
}
- (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
// Data for the cell, e.g. text for label
id myData = [self myDataForIndexPath:indexPath];
// Prototype knows how to calculate its height for the given data
return [self.prototypeCell myHeightForData:myData];
}
Of course, if you're using custom height, you probably have multiple cell prototypes, so you'd store them in a dictionary or something.
As far as I can tell, the table view doesn't attempt to reuse the prototype, presumably because it was dequeued outside of cellForRowAtIndexPath:
. This approach has worked very well for us because it allows the designer to modify cells layouts in the storyboard without requiring any code changes.
Edit: clarified the meaning of sample code and added an example for the case of static height.