UITableView dataSource objects become null when scroll - ios

Question

I'm new in CoreData and using MagicalRecord to rule with it. My problem is that I have the UITableView with an NSArray as dataSource populated with objects which fetched from CoreData db, and everything seems fine until I scroll the table for some times.
Here is my code:
Method for fetching data (MyDatabase.m):
+(NSArray *)getEntities{
...
return [MyEntity MR_findAllSortedBy:#"name" ascending:YES withPredicate:predicate];
}
Here is how I fetch and set data to UITableView in my ViewController:
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
myEntitiesArray = [MyDatabase getEntities];
if(myEntitiesArray.count != 0)
[myTableView setTableData:myEntitiesArray];
}
Here is setTableData method implementation in MyTableView.m:
- (void)setTableData:(NSArray *)array {
if (array && [array count] > 0) {
_tableData = array;
[self reloadData];
}
}
And here is how I set up my cells in MyTableView.m:
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView willDisplayCell:(SSCell *)cell forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
cell.nameLabel.text = [(MyEntity *)_tableData[indexPath.row] name];
}
I tried to put an NSLog(#"name is %#",[(MyEntity *)_tableData[indexPath.row] name]) into willDisplayCell and found that when cells become empty, NSLog prints out the messages "name is (null)". I know this question is possibly solved by many people and many times before I faced this problem. Hope someone will help me to solve it too :)
UPDATE: cellForRowAtIndexPath method:
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
static NSString *cellIdentifier = #"ssCell";
SSCell *cell = (SSCell *)[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:cellIdentifier forIndexPath:indexPath];
if( !cell ) {
[self registerNib:[UINib nibWithNibName:#"SSCell" bundle:nil] forCellReuseIdentifier:cellIdentifier];
cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:cellIdentifier forIndexPath:indexPath];
[cell setSelectedBackgroundView:selectedBackgroundView];
}
cell.nameLabel.text = [(MyEntity *)_tableData[indexPath.row] name];
return cell;
}
I also call this method inside MyTableView.m init method:
[self registerNib:[UINib nibWithNibName:#"SSCell" bundle:nil] forCellReuseIdentifier:#"ssCell"];

Answer 1

You have to use cellForRowAtIndexPath. In this method the cells are allocated.
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
/*
* This is an important bit, it asks the table view if it has any available cells
* already created which it is not using (if they are offscreen), so that it can
* reuse them (saving the time of alloc/init/load from xib a new cell ).
* The identifier is there to differentiate between different types of cells
* (you can display different types of cells in the same table view)
*/
UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:#"MyIdentifier"];
/*
* If the cell is nil it means no cell was available for reuse and that we should
* create a new one.
*/
if (cell == nil) {
/*
* Actually create a new cell (with an identifier so that it can be dequeued).
*/
cell = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleSubtitle reuseIdentifier:#"MyIdentifier"];
cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;
}
/*
* Now that we have a cell we can configure it to display the data corresponding to
* this row/section
*/
cell.nameLabel.text = [(MyEntity *)_tableData[indexPath.row] name];
return cell;
}

Answer 2

You should be initializing the cell by calling init. Instead you are doing the following:
if( !cell ) {
[self registerNib:[UINib nibWithNibName:#"SSCell" bundle:nil] forCellReuseIdentifier:cellIdentifier];
cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:cellIdentifier forIndexPath:indexPath];
[cell setSelectedBackgroundView:selectedBackgroundView];
The second call attempts to again reuse an existing cell when there isn't one available. That would probably return nil again.
be very careful of the "feature" of objective C, where calling a method of a nil object does nothing. Instead of crashing with null.pointer.exception like Java, it probably floats over [cell setSelectedBackgroundView:selectedBackgroundView] and a whole bunch of other lines without a problem.