UILabel is nil in cellForRowAtIndexPath

Question

I am using a Storyboard's prototype cell with a custom table cell class and the UILabels are nil in cellForRowAtIndexPath. Xcode's Identifier is correct, the cell is initialized, and the default UILabels (i.e. textLabel and detailTextLabel) are initialized but not the custom UILabels I added and setup IBOutlets for. A couple things I have tried:

• I tried removing the registerClass calls in ViewDidLoad but that crashes since the cells need it to be initialized as the custom class GenericDetailCell.

• viewWithTag returns nil

• I tried iterating through all the subviews of UITableView to see if I was getting the wrong cell. The correct cell is getting returned by dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier

Has anyone run into this?

@implementation PeopleGroupPickerViewController
{
    NSArray *people;
    NSArray *searchResults;
}

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];

    people = [[DAL sharedInstance] getPeople:false];
    [self.tableView registerClass:[GenericDetailCell class] forCellReuseIdentifier:@"PersonCell"];
    [self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsTableView registerClass:[GenericDetailCell class] forCellReuseIdentifier:@"PersonCell"];

    // stackoverflow.com/questions/5474529
    [self.searchDisplayController setActive:YES];
    [self.searchDisplayController.searchBar becomeFirstResponder];
}

#pragma mark - Table view data source

- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
    if(tableView == self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsTableView)
    {
        return 1;
    }
    else
    {
        return 1;
    }
}

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    if(tableView == self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsTableView)
    {
        return searchResults.count;
    }
    else
    {
        return people.count;
    }
}


- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    GenericDetailCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"PersonCell" forIndexPath:indexPath];

    Person_ *thisPerson;
    if(tableView == self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsTableView)
    {
        thisPerson = (Person_ *) searchResults[indexPath.row];
        NSLog(@"searchResultsTableView, %@",thisPerson.sName);
    }
    else
    {
        thisPerson = (Person_ *) people[indexPath.row];
        NSLog(@"UITableView, %@",thisPerson.sName);
    }
    Person_ *thisSpouse = [[DAL sharedInstance] getSpouse:thisPerson People:people];

    // cell.fieldName and cell.fieldValue are nil, cell is not nil
    cell.fieldName.text = thisPerson.sName;
    cell.fieldValue.text = thisSpouse.sName;

    return cell;
}

GenericDetailCell.h:

@interface GenericDetailCell : UITableViewCell

@property (nonatomic,weak) IBOutlet UILabel *fieldName;
@property (nonatomic,weak) IBOutlet UILabel *fieldValue;

@end

Answer 1

Seems to me you might be attempting to combine a UITableViewCell predefined style (e.g. UITableViewCellStyleSubtitle) with a custom cell.

In your storyboard, if you have selected a predefined style for your Prototype cell, other controls will not be recognised.

To remedy this problem, in the Attribute Inspector for your Prototype UITableViewCell, select "Custom" type. Then add into the Prototype cell all the controls you require, including those needed to replace the default controls previously added automatically into the predefined cell type.