How do you make your datasource a string in Swift? - uitableview

Question

I'm working with a UITableView and thus UITableViewDataSource. My dataSource is
theTableView.dataSource = self
but I would like to have the UITableView get its data from a variable called 'phone' which is a String. Doing so currently errors to "String is not identical to UITableViewDataSource".
How do I get the UITableView to take its data from a string variable?
Thank you - hope this ends up being of use to others as well.
(For some background that's immaterial to others looking for the same solution: var 'phone' is a phone number being pulled from the user's contacts via the Contacts framework. I'm trying to get the UITableView to take in new phone numbers each time they're selected).

Answer 1

Well, you need to set the tableView's data source to a class that conforms to the UITableViewDataSource protocol. And then define the tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) function.
Example:
import Foundation
class Example : UITableView, UITableViewDataSource, UITableViewDelegate
{
var dataSource = [ "hello", "how", "are", "you" ]
// MARK: Lifecycle
override init(frame: CGRect, style: UITableViewStyle) {
super.init(frame: frame, style: style)
}
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
self.dataSource = self
self.delegate = self
}
required init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
super.init(coder: aDecoder)
}
// MARK: Data Source / Delegates
func tableView(tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
return self.dataSource.count
}
func numberOfSectionsInTableView(tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
return 1
}
func tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let cell = UITableViewCell(style: UITableViewCellStyle.Default, reuseIdentifier: "cellId")
cell.textLabel?.text = self.dataSource[indexPath.row]
return cell
}
}