how to make an array of UITableView #property's at build-time - ios

Question

How can I control the number of multiple UITableView's at build-time, using a single #define number?
My app presently needs 4 UITableView's. Later, the number will increase, so I want to control this at build-time with a single #define of how many.
But I get an error when I use an array in the #property declaration:
#define TOTAL_TX_CHANNELS 4
#interface blah() <UITableViewDataSource, UITableViewDelegate CBPeripheralDelegate>
{
}
#property (strong, nonatomic) UITableView* channel_tableView[ TOTAL_TX_CHANNELS ] ;
What's the trick? Should I use an NSArray or something?

Answer 1

Yes, use NSArray.
If it's configured in Interface Builder you could use:
#property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutletCollection (UITableView) NSArray * tableViews;

Answer 2

Why exactly do you need to control the # of UITableViews?
If you must do this, you could do some mathematical operation.
int adder = 4;
int currentNumberOfTvs = 4;
//Do some logic, that will add the number of current table views
if (...) //Test if user has added, or however, if another table view was added,
{
adder++;//now adder = 5. So you have a current count of how many table views there are
}
Hope that helps:)

Answer 3

I agree with the others that this is a terrible implementation. Wain's answer is very good.
However, still it is possible to implement it this way, just make sure to declare the property as
#property (assign, nonatomic) UITableView** channel_tableView;
Reference counting works only on Obj-C objects but you are creating a C array here.
Note that you have to use malloc to allocate the storage.
If you don't want to malloc, implement it as an ivar:
#interface Blah {
UITableView* channel_tableView[4];
}
#end

Answer 4

The solution was not to use an a property array, but to use an UITextView array at implementation scope, the .m...
UITextView* channel_pipe_textview[ TOTAL_TX_CHANNELS ];
Then, in function viewDidLayoutSubviews I created a UITableView for each channel, and added the standard functions for initializing the cells, all by following Apple's excellent UITableView programming guide.
It worked perfectly, completely independent of storyboard: I get four vertical side-by-side columns displaying any kind of images and text details regarding every device on the channel, with the ability to scroll, which allows any number of devices per channel.
The Apple UITableView Programming Guide also has tutorial and sample code for programmatically generating UITableViews solely at run-time.