iOS 7 Programming Cookbook

4.3. Creating Custom Table View Cell Accessories

Problem

The accessories provided to you by the iOS SDK are not sufficient, and you would like to create your own accessories.

Solution

Assign an instance of the UIView class to the accessoryView property of any instance of the UITableViewCell class:

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView
         cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath{

    UITableViewCell* cell = nil;

    cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:MyCellIdentifier
                                           forIndexPath:indexPath];

    cell.textLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Section %ld, Cell %ld",
                             (long)indexPath.section,
                             (long)indexPath.row];

    UIButton *button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeSystem];
    button.frame = CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 150.0f, 25.0f);

    [button setTitle:@"Expand"
            forState:UIControlStateNormal];

    [button addTarget:self
               action:@selector(performExpand:)
     forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

    cell.accessoryView = button;

    return cell;

}

As you can see, this code uses the performExpand: method as the selector for each button. Here is the definition of this method:

- (void) performExpand:(UIButton *)paramSender{

    /* Handle the tap event of the button */

}

This example code snippet assigns a custom button to the accessory view of every row in the targeted table. The result is shown in Figure 4-4.

Figure 4-4. Table view cells with custom accessory views

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