CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosswiftuitableview
Richard Reis
Richard Reis

Reputation: 239

Is there a way to not return a cell after a condition in UITableView?

I am working with a UITableView and want to add a conditional statement inside the cellForRowAt function to decide whether or not I should return a cell.

Here's an example of what I mean:

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
  // Here is where I add the code to calculate which cells should appear, though it's not important for this example

  if  condition {
    return cell
  } 
}

But the error message I get is Missing return in a function expected to return 'UITableViewCell'

Is there a way I can not return something?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 759

Answers (4)

J. Martin
J. Martin

Reputation: 124

I know this is an old post, but I ran into this same issue and thought I'd share my solution. I used the same code that Mohanad Refaai posted above:

    func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {

    // Here is where I add the code to calculate which cells should appear, though it's not important for this example

    if condition {
        return cell
    } 

    // return empty cell
    return UITableViewCell()
}

But I didn't like the empty cell in the UITableView, so I made it's height zero:

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, heightForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> CGFloat {
        if condition {
            return 0
        }

        return 52
    }

I hope this helps.

Upvotes: 0

Mohanad Refaai
Mohanad Refaai

Reputation: 347

I am afraid that the only acceptable solution is to do that:

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {

    // Here is where I add the code to calculate which cells should appear, though it's not important for this example

    if condition {
        return cell
    } 

    // return empty cell
    return UITableViewCell()
}

Upvotes: 2

Evgeny Karkan
Evgeny Karkan

Reputation: 9612

Is there a way I can not return something?

Even though this is not a best practice - yes, you can silence this Xcode compile-time error message by using a fatal error:

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
  // Here is where I add the code to calculate which cells should appear, though it's not important for this example

  if condition {
    return cell
  } 

  fatalError()
}

But in case if for some reason condition is false - the app will crash, so be aware of that.

In order to get more context from fatal error - you can pass a string to it describing what has happened, e.g:

fatalError("Condition Is Invalid, Failed Returning a Cell")

Upvotes: 1

Gereon
Gereon

Reputation: 17844

No, you need to always return a cell.

If you need to suppress cells, better do so in the data source methods, like numberOfRowsInSection.

Upvotes: 0

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