UITableViewCell Custom content re-added when cell becomes visible - ios

Question

I am adding a custom button into my cell.contentView, and I noticed that every time a cell is scrolled off the visible part of the screen and back on, the button gets re-added - the translucent parts of it get more and more solid. What is the correct way to handle it so that it does not keep stacking more objects on top when scrolling through the tableView? Note that custom content is different for each cell, so I cannot put it into the if (cell == nil) {...} block.
The code I have is:
UISegmentedControl *btn = [[UISegmentedControl alloc] initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObject:btn_title]];
// set various other properties of btn
...
[cell.contentView addSubview:btn];

Answer 1

Every time the cell is dequeued, you have to remove the old subviews before adding new ones, or else you'll get that stacking effect. You can do this in one of two places:
a) In tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:, remove your old views after the dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier: call and before adding your new ones.
b) If you're using a subclass of UITableViewCell, you can override prepareForReuse to remove unwanted views. prepareForReuse is called every time a cell is dequeued for reuse, so it's a good place to get rid of old views from the last time the cell was configured.

Answer 2

I'll post a sample fix for the code you posted. It can be extended to take care of more views.
The steps are:
Create a method in your CustomCell class that takes care of the whole setup (for example: setupWithItems:)
Once you have a cell in cellForRowAtIndexPath: (after dequeueing it or creating it), you should call setupWithItems: with the new list of items the cell should display.
In your setupWithItems: implementation, make sure you remove the UISegmentedControl from its parent view. You can easily do this it the segmented control is stored as a property of your custom cell.
In your setupWithItems: implementation, create a new UISegmentedControl and add it to the CustomCell's view hierarchy.
Sample code:
-(UITableViewCell*)tableView:(UITableView*)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath*)indexPath
{
CustomCell* cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:kSomeIdentifier];
if (!cell)
{
// Create a new cell
}
NSArray* currentCellItems = [self cellItemsForRow:indexPath.row];
[cell setupWithItems:currentCellItems];
return cell;
}
And in your CustomCell subclass:
- (void)setupWithItems:(NSArray*)items
{
if (self.segmentedControl)
{
[self.segmentedControl removeFromSuperView];
self.segmentedControl = nil;
}
// More setup...
UISegmentedControl *btn = [[UISegmentedControl alloc] initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObject:btn_title]];
// set various other properties of btn
[cell.contentView addSubview:btn];
}