xamarin/mvvmcross UITableView with static content - uitableview

Question

I've searched around the xamarin tutorials and over the various posts about UITableView in xamarin but I couldn't found whatever about UITableView with static cells.
What I'm trying to achieve is a simple detail screen like twitterific app, but without Nib or storyboards (using mvvmcross, storyboards aren't available and Nib files prevent from using static UITableView, at least I couldn't find any way to do it)
Furthermore, after trying differents solutions I've ended up with something like this:
UITableViewController
public override int NumberOfSections(UITableView tableView)
{
return 1;
}
public override int RowsInSection(UITableView tableview, int section)
{
return 1;
}
public override UITableViewCell GetCell(UITableView tableView, NSIndexPath indexPath)
{
UITableViewCell cell = tableView.DequeueReusableCell("test");
if (cell == null)
{
cell = new SejourInfoViewPatientCell();
//cell = new UITableViewCell(UITableViewCellStyle.Subtitle, "test");
}
//cell.TextLabel.Text = "test";
return cell;
}
But now the mvvmcross binding doesn't works. If I take the exact same binding and use it on a non static UITableViewController everything works fine
If someone could point me to a direction I'll be glad

Answer 1

I've been struggling with the same problem. I was able to get around the binding issue by having my view inherit from MvxViewController then in ViewDidLoad:
public override void ViewDidLoad ()
{
base.ViewDidLoad ();
UITableView table = new UITableView();
Action<UITableViewCell> initializers = new Action<UITableViewCell>[] {
(cell) => {
this.CreateBinding(cell.TextLabel)
.For(c => c.Text)
.To(x => x.FirstName)
.Apply();
},
(cell) => {
this.CreateBinding(cell.TextLabel)
.For(c => c.Text)
.To(x => x.LastName)
.Apply();
}
};
StubDataSource source = new StubDataSource(table, initializers);
table.Source = source;
}
StubDataSource inherits from MvxStandardTableViewSource (though depending on your needs you'll probably want to inherit off UITableViewSource (overriding GetCell instead).
public class StubDataSource : MvxStandardTableViewSource
{
private readonly Action<UITablleViewCell>[] _inits;
public StubDataSource(
UITableView tableView,
Action<UITablleViewCell>[] inits)
: base(tableView)
{
_inits = inits;
}
public override int NumberOfSections(UITableView tableView)
{
return 1;
}
public override int RowsInSection(UITableView tableview, int section)
{
return 2;
}
protected override UITableViewCell GetOrCreateCellFor(UITableView tableView, NSIndexPath indexPath, object item)
{
var reuse = base.CreateDefaultBindableCell(tableView, indexPath, item);
switch(indexPath.Row)
{
case 0:
_inits[0](reuse);
case 1:
_inits[1](reuse);
}
return reuse;
}
}
Two points to note,
This is a bit of hack (thanks Closures), but its the only way to bind to static tables in ios that I can think of. Hopefully someone will suggest a better way.
The second is when you create custom cells with subviews (e.g. UITextFields etc) you should create a custom cell type and have those subviews as a class variable, otherwise the GC will collect them you'll get SIGSEGV exceptions see

Answer 2

I'm not sure what a static TableView or Cell are, but I've just posted a complete sample using "custom cells" on https://github.com/slodge/ListApp in answer to MvxTableViewSource DequeueReusableCell issue when scrolling
The key parts were:
ensure the custom cell includes an IntPtr constructor
use RegisterClassForCellReuse on the custom cell type
override GetOrCreateCellFor in your table source - and use DequeueReusableCell to create the cell
For variable height cells, you'll also need to override GetHeightForRow within the table source