UITableView Population Slowness - ios

Question

I'm trying to make an app with a calendar being displayed and as soon as a day on the calendar (each day is a UIView with a tap gesture) is tapped, all calendar appointments for that day should be displayed in a UITableView. I've got this working, but there's a big lag between when the tap occurs and when the data is actually populated into the UITableView. Here's my code:
EKEventStore *store = [[EKEventStore alloc] init];
//Access Granted to Calendar by user
[store requestAccessToEntityType:EKEntityTypeEvent completion:^(BOOL granted, NSError *error) {
// Create the start date components
NSDateFormatter *startFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc]init];
[startFormatter setDateFormat:#"MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm a"];
NSString *monthNumberString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%i", month];
NSString *startDateString = [[[[[monthNumberString stringByAppendingString:#"/"] stringByAppendingString:dLabel.text] stringByAppendingString:#"/"] stringByAppendingString:yearString] stringByAppendingString:#" 12:01 am"];
NSDate *start = [startFormatter dateFromString:startDateString];
NSLog(#"Start Date: %#", startDateString);
// Create the end date components
NSDateFormatter *endFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc]init];
[endFormatter setDateFormat:#"MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm a"];
NSString *endDateString = [[[[[monthNumberString stringByAppendingString:#"/"] stringByAppendingString:dLabel.text] stringByAppendingString:#"/"] stringByAppendingString:yearString] stringByAppendingString:#" 11:59 pm"];
NSDate *end = [endFormatter dateFromString:endDateString];
NSLog(#"End Date: %#", endDateString);
// Create the predicate from the event store's instance method
NSPredicate *predicate = [store predicateForEventsWithStartDate:start
endDate:end
calendars:nil];
// Fetch all events that match the predicate
events = [store eventsMatchingPredicate:predicate];
//Sort the array
events = [events sortedArrayUsingSelector:#selector(compareStartDateWithEvent:)];
int eventCount = [events count];
NSLog(#"%i", eventCount);
for (int i=0; i<eventCount; i++) {
EKEvent *theEvent = [events objectAtIndex:i];
NSLog (#"Element %i = %#", i, theEvent.title);
}
UITableView *dayTableView = [[UITableView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(360, 0, 300, 550)
style:UITableViewStylePlain];
dayTableView.backgroundColor = lightBlueColor;
dayTableView.separatorColor = [UIColor clearColor];
dayTableView.delegate = self;
dayTableView.dataSource = self;
[super addSubview:dayTableView];
}];
UITableview Delegate Functions:
- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
NSLog (#"I made a section!");
return 1; //count of section
}
- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
NSLog (#"I made %i rows!", [events count]);
return [events count];
}
-(UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
UITableViewCell *c = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:#"mycell"];
EKEvent *theEvent = [events objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
c.textLabel.text = theEvent.title;
NSLog (#"Cell %i = %#", indexPath.row, theEvent.title);
//c.textLabel.text = #"Calendar Event Goes Here";
c.textLabel.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
//NSLog (#"I made a cell!");
return c;
}
-(CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
return 35;
}
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Without profiling it is difficult to say what the bottleneck of your code is. However, based on previous experience I would say that it is the lines that looks like
NSString *startDateString = [[[[[monthNumberString stringByAppendingString:#"/"] stringByAppendingString:dLabel.text] stringByAppendingString:#"/"] stringByAppendingString:yearString] stringByAppendingString:#" 12:01 am"];
At least if it is called +20000x (or something) a second. First of all it would be more convienient to write this as
NSString *startDateString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/%#/%# 12:01 am", monthNumberString, dLabel.text, yearString];
But I fear this would not speed up your program much. I would recommend going back to plain C code and use e.g. sprintf instead. You can look up the syntax of it here as well as some examples of use.

Answer 2

I found the answer. The problem is here:
[store requestAccessToEntityType:EKEntityTypeEvent completion:^(BOOL granted, NSError *error) {
the way that the event store is accessed is different on iOS6 and iOS5. Here's a link that shows the correct way of doing it:
http://fostah.com/ios/2012/09/28/ios6-event-edit.html