Expandable custom UITableViewCell for iOS 11+ - ios

Question

I realize that many people have asked this question in various forms and the answers are all over the page, so let me summarize my specific situation in hopes of getting more specific answers. First of all, I'm building for iOS 11+ and have a relatively recent version of XCode (11+). Maybe not the latest, but recent enough.
Basically, I need a self-sizing tableview where the cells may expand and collapse at runtime when the user interacts with them. In viewDidLoad I set the rowHeight to UITableView.automaticDimension and estimatedRowHeight to some number that's bigger than the canned value of 44. But the cell is not expanding like it should, even though I seem to have tried every bit of advice in the book.
If that matters, I have a custom class for the table cell but no .XIB file for it - the UI is defined directly in the prototype. I've tried a number of other variations, but it feels like the easiest is making a UIStackView the only direct child of the prototype (the "revenue" features so to speak would all be inside it. In my case, they include a label and another tableview - I nest 3 levels deep - but that's probably beside the point) and constraining all 4 of it's edges to the parent. I've tried that, and I've tinkered with the distribution in the stack view (Fill, Fill Evenly, Fill Proportionately), but none of it seems to work. What can I do to make the cells expand properly?
In case anyone's wondering, I used to override heightForRowAt but now I don't because it's not easy to predict the height at runtime and I'm hoping the process could be automated.

Answer 1

Start with the basics...
Here is a vertical UIStackView with two labels:
The red outline shows the frame of the stack view.
If we tap the button, it will set bottomLabel.isHidden = true:
Notice that in addition to being hidden, the stack view removes the space it was occupying.
Now, we can do that with a stack view in a table view cell to get expand/collapse functionality.
We'll start with every-other row expanded:
Now we tap the "Collapse" button for row 1 and we get:
Not quite what we want. We successfully "collapsed" the cell content, but the table view doesn't know anything about it.
So, we can add a closure... when we tap the button, the code in the cell will show/hide the bottom label AND it will use the closure to tell the table view what happened. Our cellForRowAt func looks like this:
override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let c = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "c", for: indexPath) as! ExpColCell
c.setData("Top \(indexPath.row)", str2: "Bottom \(indexPath.row)\n2\n3\n4\n5", isCollapsed: isCollapsedArray[indexPath.row])
c.didChangeHeight = { [weak self] isCollapsed in
guard let self = self else { return }
// update our data source
self.isCollapsedArray[indexPath.row] = isCollapsed
// tell the tableView to re-run its layout
self.tableView.performBatchUpdates(nil, completion: nil)
}
return c
}
and we get:
Here's a complete example:
Simple "dashed outline view"
class DashedOutlineView: UIView {
#IBInspectable var dashColor: UIColor = .red
var shapeLayer: CAShapeLayer!
override class var layerClass: AnyClass {
return CAShapeLayer.self
}
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
commonInit()
}
required init?(coder: NSCoder) {
super.init(coder: coder)
commonInit()
}
func commonInit() -> Void {
shapeLayer = self.layer as? CAShapeLayer
shapeLayer.fillColor = UIColor.clear.cgColor
shapeLayer.lineWidth = 1.0
shapeLayer.lineDashPattern = [8,8]
}
override func layoutSubviews() {
super.layoutSubviews()
shapeLayer.strokeColor = dashColor.cgColor
shapeLayer.path = UIBezierPath(rect: bounds).cgPath
}
}
The cell class
class ExpColCell: UITableViewCell {
public var didChangeHeight: ((Bool) -> ())?
private let stack = UIStackView()
private let topLabel = UILabel()
private let botLabel = UILabel()
private let toggleButton = UIButton()
private let outlineView = DashedOutlineView()
override init(style: UITableViewCell.CellStyle, reuseIdentifier: String?) {
super.init(style: style, reuseIdentifier: reuseIdentifier)
commonInit()
}
required init?(coder: NSCoder) {
super.init(coder: coder)
commonInit()
}
func commonInit() -> Void {
// button properties
toggleButton.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
toggleButton.backgroundColor = .systemBlue
toggleButton.setTitleColor(.white, for: .normal)
toggleButton.setTitleColor(.gray, for: .highlighted)
toggleButton.setTitle("Collapse", for: [])
// label properties
topLabel.text = "Top Label"
botLabel.text = "Bottom Label"
topLabel.font = .systemFont(ofSize: 32.0)
botLabel.font = .italicSystemFont(ofSize: 24.0)
topLabel.backgroundColor = .green
botLabel.backgroundColor = .systemTeal
botLabel.numberOfLines = 0
// outline view properties
outlineView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
// stack view properties
stack.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
stack.axis = .vertical
stack.spacing = 8
// add the labels
stack.addArrangedSubview(topLabel)
stack.addArrangedSubview(botLabel)
// add outlineView, stack view and button to contentView
contentView.addSubview(outlineView)
contentView.addSubview(stack)
contentView.addSubview(toggleButton)
// we'll use the margin guide
let g = contentView.layoutMarginsGuide
NSLayoutConstraint.activate([
stack.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: g.topAnchor),
stack.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: g.leadingAnchor),
outlineView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: stack.topAnchor),
outlineView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: stack.leadingAnchor),
outlineView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: stack.trailingAnchor),
outlineView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: stack.bottomAnchor),
toggleButton.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: g.topAnchor),
toggleButton.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: g.trailingAnchor),
toggleButton.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: stack.trailingAnchor, constant: 16.0),
toggleButton.widthAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 92.0),
])
// we set the bottomAnchor constraint like this to avoid intermediary auto-layout warnings
let c = stack.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: g.bottomAnchor)
c.priority = UILayoutPriority(rawValue: 999)
c.isActive = true
// set label Hugging and Compression to prevent them from squeezing/stretching
topLabel.setContentHuggingPriority(.required, for: .vertical)
topLabel.setContentCompressionResistancePriority(.required, for: .vertical)
botLabel.setContentHuggingPriority(.required, for: .vertical)
botLabel.setContentCompressionResistancePriority(.required, for: .vertical)
contentView.clipsToBounds = true
toggleButton.addTarget(self, action: #selector(toggleButtonTapped), for: .touchUpInside)
}
func setData(_ str1: String, str2: String, isCollapsed: Bool) -> Void {
topLabel.text = str1
botLabel.text = str2
botLabel.isHidden = isCollapsed
updateButtonTitle()
}
func updateButtonTitle() -> Void {
let t = botLabel.isHidden ? "Expand" : "Collapse"
toggleButton.setTitle(t, for: [])
}
#objc func toggleButtonTapped() -> Void {
botLabel.isHidden.toggle()
updateButtonTitle()
// comment / un-comment this line to see the difference
didChangeHeight?(botLabel.isHidden)
}
}
and a table view controller to demonstrate
class ExpColTableViewController: UITableViewController {
var isCollapsedArray: [Bool] = []
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
tableView.register(ExpColCell.self, forCellReuseIdentifier: "c")
// 16 "rows" start with every-other row collapsed
for i in 0..<15 {
isCollapsedArray.append(i % 2 == 0)
}
}
override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
return isCollapsedArray.count
}
override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let c = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "c", for: indexPath) as! ExpColCell
c.setData("Top \(indexPath.row)", str2: "Bottom \(indexPath.row)\n2\n3\n4\n5", isCollapsed: isCollapsedArray[indexPath.row])
c.didChangeHeight = { [weak self] isCollapsed in
guard let self = self else { return }
// update our data source
self.isCollapsedArray[indexPath.row] = isCollapsed
// tell the tableView to re-run its layout
self.tableView.performBatchUpdates(nil, completion: nil)
}
return c
}
}