What actually defines the height of a UITableViewCell? - ios

I'm working on an iOS App right now and I want to build a view controller that uses a UITableView to create new events in a calendar (very similarly to how iOS handles event creation in the system calendar, actually). The table view has two sections, the first section holding a date picker and the second section holding two custom cells for entering an event name and notes via a text field and a text view. After playing around with them I managed to force-set them to the right size, but in the process I realized that I don't actually understand how iOS calculates individual cell heights, especially in a table view with multiple sections and multiple custom cell classes. So far, I've found a number of things that seem to play a role:
Contents of a cell, e.g. a text field and its constraints
Hugging priority and compression resistance priority of a cells content
Settings for row height and view height in the size inspector of the cell itself:
Arrangement and Autolayout settings in the size inspector of the cell
Settings for the rowHeight and estimatedRowHeight properties of a UITableViewController
The more I look into it, the more complex and confusing it all gets. Maybe one of you can shed some light on this shady bit of Swift magic?

Basically, the rule is that if the table view's rowHeight is UITableView.automaticDimension, then as long as the estimatedRowHeight isn't 0, you'll get automatic row heights, meaning that the height is determined by the cell's autolayout constraints from the inside out.
The settings can be made in respect to the table view as a whole (in code or in the storyboard) or for a single cell using the height delegate method.

Add your constraints in the cell in right way.
don't use tableview "height for cell" delegate method.
use this in your viewDidLoad
self.tableView.estimatedRowHeight = 44.0
self.tableView.rowHeight = UITableView.automaticDimension

I would say that table view has a bit tricky.
Originally it needed to know size of cell before the cell was created.
The height of cell is defined by UITableViewDelegate optional function tableView(_:heightForRowAt:)
If this function is not defined (or delegate is set to nil) then it will take value of tableView.rowHeight
For performance reasons there was also added tableView(_:estimatedHeightForRowAt:) and tableView.estimatedRowHeight
The idea was not to calculate height of every cell during fast scrolling (such calculation may be costly) and use height that is good enough.
So that are the basics before constraints layout.
Then magic came. You can return UITableView.automaticDimension as height (by delegate method or by setting tableView.rowHeight). It will force tableView to calculate height from cells' constraints (note that constraints must define that height so very likely you want to set content hugging and resistance priority of every label, and you will encounter 'errors' in storyboard/xib).
Since that operation is costly you Apple forces you to specify estimated height by yourself. Also it's important to set that value to something that makes sense, otherwise things like programatically scroll won't work correctly.

Related

Attach/Stick a UIButton under the UITableView

This illustration shows what i'm trying to do:
The green list is the UITableView where it dynamically adjust it's height based on the number of items inside of it.
Underneath of the UITableView is a button that should follow the UITableView whenever it changes it's height size.
The UIButton should always be beneath the UITableView whatever the size of the UItableView.
I'm currently using autoresizing for UITableView
I have tried to use Autolayout but it seems i can't still find the answer.
i currently have no constraints in the layout.
This boils down to calculating the height of the table view that perfectly fits the cells. Basically you need to measure the size of every cell, then create a height constraint on the table view, and set its constant to the sum of the cells' heights.
Measuring the height of cells is tricky thought. If you only have a few cells (like in your illustrations), you can just instantiate all of them, keep them in an array and use systemLayoutSizeFittingSize to calculate their sizes. If you use multi-line labels, it is also important to set their preferredMaxLayoutWidth to appropriate values.
However, if you have only a few cells (and so cell reuse is not important), stack view is probably a better choice than table view. It's just too tricky to calculate the perfect height of a table view.

UITableViewCell of mixed xibs and programmatically generated UITableViewCells

I have to integrate a UITableViewCell generated programmatically from code like so:
UITableViewCell *newCell = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithFrame: CGRectMake(0,0, screenWidth, 150];
However the rest of the cells in this table view are generated with xibs that rely on autolayout, and so the original programmer only used the estimatedHeightForRow method rather than the heightForRow.
My programmatically generated table view cell is all botched (has the default estimated height of 64 rather than the frame's height of 150) unless I implement heightForRow whereas the existing cells are botched as soon as I do implement heightForRow in addition to estimatedHeightForRow. Is there a way around this conundrum?
Thanks for any advice.
Firstly, you should use UITableViewCell's designated initializer - initWithStyle:reuseIdentifier: instead the UIView's initWithFrame:. However, I don't think that is the cause of your problem as I have tested initWithFrame: and it appears to default to default style and no reuse identifier.
You haven't said what you are doing with the cell once you instantiate it. Are you using the default layout or adding your own custom views? The default layout (with just a line of text) appears to work correctly in my testing, with the cells being sized according to the amount of text in the textLabel.
If you are adding custom views you need to ensure that the contentView has vertical constraints that fully define its height. For example, if you have two UILabels vertically aligned then you will need a vertical constraints such as #"V:|-10-[label1][label2]-10-|". If the constraints are not fully defined then contentView will collapse to zero and your views will appear overlapping the next cell.
To give a little more detail, when using self-sizing cells UITableView does not look at the frame of the returned cell but rather calls the cell's systemLayoutSizeFittingSize:withHorizontalFittingPriority:verticalFittingPriority:. This results in the Auto Layout engine analyzing the cell's constraints to calculate the appropriate layout size. UITableView then sets the cell's frame according to that size and its position in the table.
I would put an if statement in your height for row method and set the heights to their corresponding cell. It would also be easier if I could see code.

Managing dynamic height for UITableviewCell using iOS 8

I am trying out autoLayout features for dynamic height for UITableViewCell in iOS 8, I followed this blog http://www.appcoda.com/self-sizing-cells/. So here they mention that from iOS 8 managing dynamic height is hassle free.(In the link they have used swift, but I am using objective C)
Now after doing autolayout from xib, then we need to just write this lines of code in viewDidLoad
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
m_tableView.estimatedRowHeight = 83.0f;
m_tableView.rowHeight = UITableViewAutomaticDimension;
}
This is fine and my tableView height changes dynamically based on the content.
I want to know how to have more control on UITableViewCell height.
1) In my app, I want the cell height to be based on the content(data), but I need to have a default height, which will be applied if the content height is less than default height.
2) I want to know what will be the final height of the cell, before displaying to the user, because I want to add some UI elements below each cell.
So what functions I need to use to fulfil my tasks.
You would need to make sure your Storyboard prototype cell has NSLayoutConstraints from top to bottom. Dynamic cell sizing compresses whatever layout constraints you have in place to their maximum compression given the content set in cellForRowAtIndexPath to calculate the final rendered height of that cell. It is very convenient but it also means you need to be careful about setting your constraints correctly.
If you are adding any subviews programmatically, you need to ensure the same rule of thumb is true- there is a complete, deterministic set of constraints from the top of your cell's contentView to the bottom. Additionally, you will need to set any subviews' added in code translatesAutoResizingMaskIntoConstraints property to NO.

Detected a case where constraints ambiguously suggest a height of zero

After updating to Xcode 6.1 beta 2 when I run my app that contains tableview cells, the debug assistant says:
Warning once only: Detected a case where constraints ambiguously suggest a height of zero for a tableview cell's content view. We're considering the collapse unintentional and using standard height instead.
Before, when I used Xcode 5 on this project, I would get a few errors but those have gone away since I upgraded. I have no other errors or warnings now. I have already tried adjusting the sizes of all the tableview cells and also tried using standard height but I still get the same warning:
Warning once only: Detected a case where constraints ambiguously suggest a height of zero for a tableview cell's content view. We're considering the collapse unintentional and using standard height instead.
I have also read through all similar topics on this but none of their solutions help. When I test the app with the simulator, the app runs fine except the pictures that are supposed to be in the tableView cells aren't there.
You're encountering the side effect of a fantastic new feature in iOS8's Tableviews: Automatic Row Heights.
In iOS 7, you either had rows of a fixed size (set with tableView.rowHeight), or you'd write code to calculate the height of your cells and you'd return that in tableView:heightForRowAtIndexPath. Writing code for the calculation of a cell's height could be quite complex if you had numerous views in your cell and you had different heights to consider at different font sizes. Add in Dynamic Type and the process was a pain in the ass.
In iOS 8, you can still do the above, but now the height of the rows can be determined by iOS, provided that you've configured the content of your cell using Auto Layout. This is huge benefit for developers, because as the dynamic font size changes, or the user modifies the text size using Accessibility Settings, your UI can be adaptive to the new size. It also means if you have a UILabel that can have multiple rows of text, your cell can now grow to accommodate those when the cells needs to, and shrink when it does not, so there isn't any unnecessary whitespace.
The warning message you're seeing is telling you that there aren't enough constraints in your cell for Auto Layout to inform the tableview of the height of the cell.
To use dynamic cell height, which, along with the techniques already mentioned by other posters, will also get rid of this message, you need to ensure your cell has sufficient constraints to bind the UI items to the top and bottom of the cell. If you've used Auto Layout before, you are probably accustomed to setting Top + Leading constraints, but dynamic row height also requires bottom constraints.
The layout pass works like this, which occurs immediately before a cell is displayed on screen, in a just-in-time manner:
Dimensions for content with intrinsic sizes is calculated. This includes UILabels and UIImageViews, where their dimensions are based on the text or UIImages they contain, respectively. Both of these views will consider their width to be a known (because you've set constraints for trailing/leading edges, or you set explicit widths, or you used horizontal constraints that eventually reveal a width from side to side). Let's say a label has a paragraph of text ("number of lines" is set to 0 so it'll auto-wrap), it can only be 310 points across, so it's determined to be 120pt high at the current font size.
The UI is laid out according to your positioning constraints. There is a constraint at the bottom of the label that connects to the bottom margin of the cell. Since the label has grown to be 120 points tall, and since it's bound to the bottom of the cell by the constraint, it must push the cell "down" (increasing the height of the cell) to satisfy the constraint that says "bottom of the label is always standard distance from the bottom of the cell.
The error message you reported occurs if that bottom constraint is missing, in which case there is nothing to "push" the bottom of the cell away from the top of the cell, which is the ambiguity that's reported: with nothing to push the bottom from the top, the cell collapses. But Auto Layout detects that, too, and falls back to using the standard row height.
For what it's worth, and mostly to have a rounded answer, if you do implement iOS 8's Auto Layout-based dynamic row heights, you should implement tableView:estimatedHeightForRowAtIndexPath:. That estimate method can use rough values for your cells, and it'll be called when the table view is initially loaded. It helps UIKit draw things like the scrollbar, which can't be drawn unless the tableview knows how much content it can scroll through, but does't need totally accurate sizes, since it's just a scrollbar. This lets the calculation of the actual row height be deferred until the moment the cell is needed, which is less computationally intensive and lets your UITableView be presented quicker.
Three things have managed to silence this warning so far. You can pick up the most convenient for you. Nothing pretty though.
To set up default cell's height in viewDidLoad
self.tableView.rowHeight = 44;
Go to storyboard and change row height on your tableview to something different than 44.
To implement tableview's delegate method heightForRowAtIndexPath
- (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
return 44;
}
Weird.
To resolve this without a programmatic method, adjust the row height of the table view in the Size Inspector from the storyboard.
I had this problem after creating a custom UITableViewCell and adding my subviews to the cell instead of its contentView.
This is an autolayout issue. Make sure that your subviews have all the constraints. For me, the bottom constraint was missing for the Title Label in the cell. When I added that, the warning went away and everything showed up perfectly.
Just enable Self-Sizing Table View Cells
tableView.estimatedRowHeight = 85.0
tableView.rowHeight = UITableViewAutomaticDimension
& make sure you added constraints on all sides of UITableViewCell as-
Example Link 1
Example Link 2
If u are using static cell or dynamic cell ,simply add some row height to table view in inspector table and uncheck the automatic to the right side of row height ,that's it u will stop getting this warning .
I got this warning today. Here is what made it disappear for me(in interface builder)
1.Set the row height field for the table view to something other than 44
2 Set the row height field for the tableView cell to something other than 44
I did not have to make any changes in code
In my case, I was building the cell programmatically and kept getting this error.
I was adding the subviews and constraints in the UITableViewCell's init method like this:
addSubview(rankingLabel)
addConstraints(cellConstraints)
I solved the issue by adding them to the cell's contentView instead:
contentView.addSubview(rankingLabel)
contentView.addConstraints(cellConstraints)
Set the estimated row height to zero and the warning disappears:
If you have created a Custom tableViewCell for tableView, make sure you have given both bottom and top constraints to you cells,
you could also get this message if your subviews inside custom cells are aligned in center Y which wouldnt pop any error message but would mess up with identifying height of row for tableview in turn like in Image I have attached , here we have both top and bottom constraints
When you create a Custom Cell for tableView you must specific row height or top and bottom constraints for you custom cell's subviews inside cell (e.g. label in custom cell like in below image)
But if this doesn't work you can try setting row height for your cell instead of being automatic like in this image
But be sure if you turn that automatic tick off you have to adjust your row size for changes programmatically which could have been done automatically
I got this Warning today All I did is just added one extra line to my code
tableView.rowHeight = 200;
add this line of code inside the
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section:Int) -> Int {
...
}
and the final code look like
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
tableView.rowHeight = 200;
...
}
this code will increase the table Row cell height to 200 the default height is 44
I too experienced this warning with moving to Xcode 6 GM. I was only getting the warning when I rotated the device back to its original position.
I am using custom UITableViewCells. The storyboard table view is set to my custom size (100.0 in my case). While the table cells render properly as they have in previous releases, I did not like warning message.
In addition to the above ideas, I added this
- (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
return 100.0;
}
Screen renders... responds to rotation and no more warning messages.
In xcode 6.0.1 I had removed this warnings specifying the row height using:
- (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
return 44.0;
}
You may also see this message if your only constraints are set to align all items vertically and you don't have/want a height specified for the cell. If you set a top/bottom constraint on the item the warning will disappear.
I had this problem when my labels and views in the custom tableViewCell were constrained to the customCell, not its Content View. When I cleared the constraints and connected them to cells Content View the problem was solved.
I had the same error message,
make sure all your outlets are valid like table view and tableview Constraints
I have also similar issue for custom tableview cell which has dynamic row height. Dynamic height wasn't reflected and got the same warning in console. The solution is Adding subviews to cell instead of contentView. BTW, I have created subviews programatically.
I have this issue on TableViewCells where the constraints are set on initialisation but where the cell's contents are loaded afterwards, this means the autolayout engine can't determine the height. The other solutions here don't work because I need the cell's height to be UITableView.automaticDimension.
I just added an extra constraint to the cell:
contentView.heightAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 44, priority: .defaultLow)
In the storyboard set the cell Row height field with the same value as Row height in tableView (both with the same value worked for me).
If you add heightForRowAtIndexPath function to your code it may induce a performance issue because it will be called for each cell so be careful.
If you are making a dynamic height calculation,
you should have all elements linked to each other in terms of constraints like top and bottom.
you should definitely have a bottom constraint that is linked to the element at the bottom of your cell
if you are extending your ViewController class with UITableView and also using navigation controller to show the screen then you dont need to perform segue with identifier this may cause an error of identifier ViewController, you can use pushViewController method to show the chat screen in order to get rid from this error so here is the code just paste it in to your UItableView delegate
let chatBox = ChatBoxViewController()
navigationController?.pushViewController(chatBox, animated: true)
just put the name of your viewcontroller which you want to show next and yeah done.
I have same error, due to this line this error was shown.
self.layer.backgroundColor = UIColor(white: 1, alpha: 0.2) as! CGColor
I just change the line as following to fix the error
self.layer.backgroundColor = UIColor(white: 1, alpha: 0.2).cgColor

UITableView scrollable content size

I am trying to achieve a newsstand like effect with a scrolling and repeating background. I could do this using a UITableView if I could set it's content size (An inherited method that seems to be overridden by something else in the UITableView Code) in order to fill the view with unscrollable cells.
Currently I am planning to make a custom uiscrollview. Which will be more complex and won't have the cell reuse.
So, is there a way to set a UITableView's content size.
You could semi-hack a 'contentSize' kind of control over a UITableView by simply setting the number of cells that you have (let's assume you have a 1 section table view and aren't using a 'grouped' styled table) to:
your desired height contentSize height / height for each cell (default is 44)
Now, your problem is that if you only have, say, three rows' worth of data to display, what to do with the rest of the cells? Well, simply set their backgroundColor to the same as the table's background color and their selectionStyle property to UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone. Wham, now you have invisible cells, and can set the 'contentSize' of the table.
Note that your contentSize will only have a resolution of the height of your cells, if you leave the cell heights at their default 44, then you can only set the contentSize to a multiple of 44.

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