Unable to reload UITableView after connectionDidFinishLoading completes - ios

Question

I am downloading and parsing JSON objects to build a "news feed" to populate a UITableView. The very last line of code I have in the connectionDidFinishLoading delegate method is:
[tableView performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(reloadData) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:NO];
However, my break points in the - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)mytableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath method are not hit. (They are hit when the app first launches)
So for whatever reason even though I am calling the reloadData on the main thread; it doesn't appear to be firing. I tried just [tableView reloadData] and that did not work.
Here is my connectionDidFinishLoading method:
- (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection
{
//NSString *responseString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:responseData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSArray *publicTimeline = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:responseData options:0 error:nil];
NSUInteger newsStreamCount = [publicTimeline count];
// Initialize the collection and the dictionary
newsItemManager.newsItemCollection = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:newsStreamCount];
NSMutableArray *dictOfNewsItems = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:newsStreamCount];
// From the JSON object, parse out the individual news item JSON objects and
// put them into a dictionary.
for (int i = 0; i < newsStreamCount; i++)
{
NSDictionary *item = [publicTimeline objectAtIndex:i];
[dictOfNewsItems addObject:item];
}
// For each news item JSON object, extract out the information we need for our
// news manager class
for (int i = 0; i < newsStreamCount; i++)
{
NSString *userName = [[dictOfNewsItems objectAtIndex:i] valueForKey:#"Title"];
NSString *message = [[dictOfNewsItems objectAtIndex:i] valueForKey:#"Content"];
NSString *imgUrl = [[dictOfNewsItems objectAtIndex:i] valueForKey:#"https://si0.twimg.com/logo_normal.jpg"];
NewsItem *newsItem = [[NewsItem alloc] initWithBasicInfo:userName :message :imgUrl];
[newsItemManager.newsItemCollection addObject:newsItem];
}
[tableView performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(reloadData) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:NO];
}
Here is my header file:
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#interface NewsViewController : UITableViewController
#property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray* newsItemArray;
#property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableData *responseData;
#property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UITableView *tableView;
#end
Here is my implementation:
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
// Uncomment the following line to preserve selection between presentations.
// self.clearsSelectionOnViewWillAppear = NO;
// Uncomment the following line to display an Edit button in the navigation bar for this view controller.
// self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = self.editButtonItem;
self.title = #"News";
//self.newsItemArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithObjects:#"One", #"Two", #"Three", nil];
tableView.rowHeight = 75.0;
responseData = [NSMutableData data];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://blah.com/api/news"]];
(void)[[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self];
}
Thanks,
Flea

Answer 1

If your connectionDidFinish... method is inside your tableViewController class, maybe you just need
[self.tableView performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(reloadData) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:NO];

Answer 2

The overall problem was my newsItemManager.newsItemCollection was not being initialized properly and was returning null the entire time, thus when the UITableView was trying to load data; there was nothing to load.
I thought I had checked for this but one of those problems of staring at the computer all day and missing the obvious.