Setting custom UITableViewCells height

Question

I am using a custom UITableViewCell which has some labels, buttons and image views to be displayed. There is one label in the cell whose text is a NSString object and the length of string could be variable. Due to this, I cannot set a constant height to the cell in the UITableView's heightForCellAtIndex method. The cell's height depends on the label's height which can be determined using the NSString's sizeWithFont method. I tried using it, but it looks like I'm going wrong somewhere. How can it be fixed?

Here is the code used for initializing the cell.

if (self = [super initWithFrame:frame reuseIdentifier:reuseIdentifier])
{
    self.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;
    UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"dot.png"];
    imageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:image];
    imageView.frame = CGRectMake(45.0,10.0,10,10);

    headingTxt = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:   CGRectMake(60.0,0.0,150.0,post_hdg_ht)];
    [headingTxt setContentMode: UIViewContentModeCenter];
    headingTxt.text = postData.user_f_name;
    headingTxt.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:13];
    headingTxt.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentLeft;
    headingTxt.textColor = [UIColor blackColor];

    dateTxt = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(55.0,23.0,150.0,post_date_ht)];
    dateTxt.text = postData.created_dtm;
    dateTxt.font = [UIFont italicSystemFontOfSize:11];
    dateTxt.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentLeft;
    dateTxt.textColor = [UIColor grayColor];

    NSString * text1 = postData.post_body;
    NSLog(@"text length = %d",[text1 length]);
    CGRect bounds = [UIScreen mainScreen].bounds;
    CGFloat tableViewWidth;
    CGFloat width = 0;
    tableViewWidth = bounds.size.width/2;
    width = tableViewWidth - 40; //fudge factor
    //CGSize textSize = {width, 20000.0f}; //width and height of text area
    CGSize textSize = {245.0, 20000.0f}; //width and height of text area
    CGSize size1 = [text1 sizeWithFont:[UIFont systemFontOfSize:11.0f]
                        constrainedToSize:textSize lineBreakMode:UILineBreakModeWordWrap];

    CGFloat ht = MAX(size1.height, 28);
    textView = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(55.0,42.0,245.0,ht)];
    textView.text = postData.post_body;
    textView.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:11];
    textView.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentLeft;
    textView.textColor = [UIColor blackColor];
    textView.lineBreakMode = UILineBreakModeWordWrap;
    textView.numberOfLines = 3;
    textView.autoresizesSubviews = YES;

    [self.contentView addSubview:imageView];
    [self.contentView addSubview:textView];
    [self.contentView addSubview:webView];
    [self.contentView addSubview:dateTxt];
    [self.contentView addSubview:headingTxt];
    [self.contentView sizeToFit];

    [imageView release];
    [textView release];
    [webView release];
    [dateTxt release];
    [headingTxt release];
}

This is the label whose height and width are going wrong:

textView = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(55.0,42.0,245.0,ht)];

Answer 1

Your UITableViewDelegate should implement tableView:heightForRowAtIndexPath:

Objective-C

- (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    return [indexPath row] * 20;
}

Swift 5

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, heightForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> CGFloat {
    return indexPath.row * 20
}

You will probably want to use NSString's sizeWithFont:constrainedToSize:lineBreakMode: method to calculate your row height rather than just performing some silly math on the indexPath :)