Dynamic Table View within Static Table View Cell - ios

Question

I'm fairly new into Swift programming and right now I'm implementing a dynamic table view within a static table view's cell. I know there are plenty of solutions on stackoverflow already but I realised that most of them are in Obj-C which I'm not very familiar with it yet.
Basically, I have a TableView that is set as dynamic in one of the cell of a static table view which is part of the main table view controller. The problem I am having now is there doesn't seem to be a way to implement the data source functions without declaring them for the static table view. I have declared an #IBOutlet for the dynamic table (let's call it dynamicTableView in this scenario).
I have managed to get the override func numberOfSections(in tableView: UITableView) working by returning 1 if the tableView is not dynamicTableView as in the following code:
override func numberOfSections(in tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
if tableView == dynamicTableView {
return data.count
}
else {
return 1
}
}
However, the problem I am having now is implementing the override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath). I have no idea what to be returned if the tableView parameter is not dynamicTableView, but for the static table view.
override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
if tableView == dynamicTableView {
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "dynamic", for: indexPath) as! dynamicTableViewCell
cell.update(data[indexPath.row]) // A helper function declared in the dynamicTableViewCell.swift
return cell
}
else {
// What to return here?
}
}
Thanks!
Edit: What I meant was I can't seem to have a cellForRowAt data source function that does not affect my static table view.

Answer 1

If there is a value in numberForRows then you have to retutn a cell like this
override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
if tableView == bloggerReviewTableView {
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "dynamic", for: indexPath) as! dynamicTableViewCell
cell.update(data[indexPath.row]) // A helper function declared in the dynamicTableViewCell.swift
return cell
}
else {
// What to return here?
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "other", for: indexPath) as! OtherTableCell
return cell
}
}
//
but if the return is zero then there is no need for the if statement inside cellForRowAt as it won't be called for the other table

Answer 2

If the static tableview cells are fairly distinct, they can be individually subclassed.
The dynamic tableview/collectionview can be added in required subclass of static tableview cell.
//class for static tableview
let reviewCellId = "reviewCell"
class StaticTableClass: UITableViewController {
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
//register static cell classes
tableView.register(ReviewCell.self, forCellReuseIdentifier: reviewCellId)
//..
}
override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: reviewCellId, for: indexPath)
return cell
}
}
Create a separate ReviewCell class which will contain the dynamic UITableView like so.
This way one class will handle methods of only one tableview.
class ReviewCell: UITableViewCell, UITableViewDelegate, UITableViewDataSource {
lazy var dynamicTableView: UITableView = {
let tv = UITableView()
tv.delegate = self
tv.dataSource = self
}()
override init(style: UITableViewCellStyle, reuseIdentifier: String?) {
super.init(style: style, reuseIdentifier: reuseIdentifier)
setupViews()
}
required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
}
func setupViews() {
addSubview(dynamicTableView)
dynamicTableView.register(UITableViewCell.self, forCellReuseIdentifier: "dynamicCellId")
}
// add further tableview methods in here
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
}
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
}
}