iOS 7 Programming Cookbook

4.0. Introduction

A table view is simply a scrolling view that is separated into sections, each of which is further separated into rows. Each row is an instance of the UITableViewCell class, and you can create custom table view rows by subclassing this class.

Using table views is an ideal way to present a list of items to users. You can embed images, text, and other objects into your table view cells; you can customize their height, shape, grouping, and much more. The simplicity of the structure of table views is what makes them highly customizable.

A table view can be fed with data using a table view data source, and you can receive various events and control the physical appearance of table views using a table view delegate object. These are defined, respectively, in the UITableViewDataSource and UITableViewDelegate protocols.

Although an instance of UITableView subclasses UIScrollView, table views can only scroll vertically. This is more a feature than a limitation. In this chapter, we will discuss the different ways of creating, managing, and customizing table views.

Table views can be utilized in two ways:

• By using the UITableViewController class. This class is similar to the UIViewController class (see Recipe 1.9) in that it is a view controller, but representing a table instead of a normal view. The beauty of this class is that every instance of it already conforms to the UITableViewDelegate and the UITableViewDataSource protocols. So the table view controller by default becomes ...