Why do all backgrounds disappear on UITableViewCell select?

Question

My current project's UITableViewCell behavior is baffling me. I have a fairly straightforward subclass of UITableViewCell. It adds a few extra elements to the base view (via [self.contentView addSubview:...] and sets background colors on the elements to have them look like black and grey rectangular boxes.

Because the background of the entire table has this concrete-like texture image, each cell's background needs to be transparent, even when selected, but in that case it should darken a bit. I've set a custom semi-transparent selected background to achieve this effect:

UIView *background = [[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:self.bounds] autorelease];
background.backgroundColor = [[UIColor blackColor] colorWithAlphaComponent:0.6];
background.opaque = NO;

[self setSelectedBackgroundView:background];

And although that yields the right look for the background, a weird side effect happens when I select the cell; all other backgrounds are somehow turnt off. Here's a screenshot. The bottom cell looks like it should and is not selected. The top cell is selected, but it should display the black and grey rectangular areas, yet they are gone!

Who knows what's going on here and even more important: how can I correct this?

Answer 1

What is happening is that each subview inside the TableViewCell will receive the setSelected and setHighlighted methods. The setSelected method will remove background colors but if you set it for the selected state it will be corrected.

For example if those are UILabels added as subviews in your customized cell, then you can add this to the setSelected method of your TableViewCell implementation code:

- (void)setSelected:(BOOL)selected animated:(BOOL)animated
{
    [super setSelected:selected animated:animated];

    self.textLabel.backgroundColor = [UIColor blackColor];

}

where self.textLabel would be whatever those labels are that are shown in the picture above

I'm not sure where your adding your selected view, I usually add it in the setSelected method.

Alternatively, you can subclass the UILabel and override the setHighlighted method like so:

-(void)setHighlighted:(BOOL)highlighted
{
    [self setBackgroundColor:[UIColor blackColor]];
}