insertRowsAtIndexPaths: doesn't animate without reloadRowsAtIndexPaths: - uitableview

Question

I've created a set of classes to simplify managing table views. One of the things they do is create a diff for a section based on what data is updated and then apply the correct insertions, deletions and moves.
This is all working great for most of my app, except for two uncooperative table views. Call them table A and table B. I've found a fix that works for each individually, but I can't fix both at the same time. I've checked that the diffs are being correctly generated, but for some reason I get different animations in each.
Both table A and table B are simply inserting rows. There are no deletions or moves.
In the below code BREAK_TABLE_A causes:
Table A - All rows in section=0 row>=1 (not row=0) to shift to the bottom while re-animating in from the top. Very ugly
Table B - A nice insertion animation
BREAK_TABLE_B causes:
Table A - A nice insertion animation
Table B - No animation. Just like reloadData
Ultimately, I would actually prefer the method in BREAK_TABLE_B because this allows me to keep the same cells for the same data, which means I can perform animations on those individual cells using configureCell:.
The code is relatively straightforward:
UITableViewRowAnimation animation = UITableViewRowAnimationFade;
...
[self.tableView beginUpdates];
NSMutableSet *insertedPaths...;
NSMutableSet *deletedPaths...;
NSMutableSet *refreshPaths...; // Will contain any cell that was present before and after the update.
[self.tableView moveRowsAtIndexPaths:... // Not executed in these examples
...
[self.tableView insertRowsAtIndexPaths:insertedPaths.allObjects withRowAnimation:animation];
[self.tableView deleteRowsAtIndexPaths:deletedPaths.allObjects withRowAnimation:animation];
if (BREAK_TABLE_A){
[self.tableView reloadRowsAtIndexPaths:refreshPaths.allObjects withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationNone];
} else { //BREAK_TABLE_B - I would prefer this solution if possible
for (NSIndexPath *path in refreshPaths){
UITableViewCell *cell = [self.tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:path];
if (cell){
NSUInteger index = [newSection.rows indexOfObjectPassingTest:^BOOL(LQTableViewRow * _Nonnull obj, NSUInteger idx, BOOL * _Nonnull stop) {
return [obj.rowIdentifier isEqual:oldSection.rows[path.row].rowIdentifier];
}];
LQTableViewRow *row = newSection.rows[index];
[self configureCell:cell section:newSection row:row];
}
}
}
... update the actual data source ...
[self.tableView endUpdates];
In order to fix this, I've tried wrapping the above code in [CATransaction begin/commit/flush] as well as [UIView begin/commitAnimations] blocks. CATransaction freezes the app with no errors (probably waiting for some other animation) when using table B. UIView causes both views (and all others in the app) to animate incorrectly (cells fade in and animate from bottom to top of their final positions, rather than from the top to the bottom of the tableview).
I've also tried to load the views with dummy data such that they are as similar to each other as possible with the same weird results.

Answer 1

Well, it turns out that the crash when using the CATransaction led me to the answer. I had accidentally been doing [CATransaction begin] twice in one of my cells, instead of committing the transaction. Fixing that fixed the animations.