CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosswiftuitableviewunit-testing
4thSpace
4thSpace

Reputation: 44312

How to retrieve cellForRow(at:) when tableview isn't visible

I've created a class that contains all UITableView protocol methods. I'm using it successfully in a ViewController that has a tableview on its scene.

The advantage to having all of the tableview code in a different class is that I should be able to unit test tableview methods. The problem I'm running into is that when I call cellForRow(at:), it returns a nil cell.

I can put a breakpoint in the tableview class's cellForRow(at:) and see just before it return cell that the cell is valid. Once I leave cellForRow(at:) and go back into the unit test, the returned cell is nil.

This happens because none of the cells are visible. This thread [ Table view's `cellForRow(at:)` is `nil` in Unit Test ] hits on the problem but not solution for this specific case.

Is there some way to return a cell from cellForRow(at:) when the tableview/cells are not visible?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1280

Answers (2)

Sidney Liu
Sidney Liu

Reputation: 477

UITableViewCell will process appearance calculation in the delegate tableView(_:cellForRowAt:), so you may want get the cell it doesn’t definite.

I have met this question recently, and my solution is following:

Definite a global variable (2D-Array) in this or another file:

class ThisTableCell
{
static var cells = [UITableViewCell](repeating: [UITableViewCell](repeating: UITableViewCell(), count: sectionCount), count: rowCount)
}

And then add

ThisTableCell.cells[indexPath.section][indexPath.row] = cell

in that delegate. And you can type ThisTableCell.cells[indexPath.section][indexPath.row] to get current Cell.

Upvotes: 0

Aleksandr Medvedev
Aleksandr Medvedev

Reputation: 8978

Your assumption is correct, UITableView.cellForRow(at:) method doesn't return a cell if it's not visible at that moment.

In the meanwhile why not use the data-source of the UITableView and call UITableViewDataSource.tableView(_:cellForRowAt:) ? I think it does exactly what you need and returns cells disregarding the actual UITableView position.

Upvotes: 2

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