How to add UITextView to bottom of UITableView - swift

Question

I have a project where I have to show a lot of information on one screen. It is not too much information, but it is complicated to achieve. For the purpose of this question I suggest to look at this screenshot that will illustrate what I want to achieve.
I currently set up this screen with a UIViewController containing a UITableView that is pinned to the top, bottom, leading and trailing anchor of the view using AutoLayout for the middle section. This works great. I then added a tableHeaderView which contains the information about the user on top. Now I have just added a second UITableView in the tableFooterView, and surprisingly, this works like a charm too. I had a bit of trouble with the height, but I managed to get it done in the viewDidLayoutSubviews() method. But that's bit off topic.
I am now at the final stage where I want to add a UITextView together with a UIButton (in a UIView container) to allow users to add comments. At first, I added this in the tableFooterView and it worked, but as soon as the content was too short (e.g. only one row in the middle and no comments yet), the UITextView would appear in the middle of the screen (directly under the contents of the UITableView). I read up on this and figured it is the expected behavior of the tableFooterView, so I am now trying to figure out a way on how to add this custom view to add comments that will always be on the bottom if the content is not filling the entire screen, but will also scroll with the contents if the content is larger than the screen size. (Ideally, I would want to be able to grow or shrink the UITextView when a user enters text - might be relevant in case someone suggests contentInsets).
Any suggestions? Should I add a subview directly to the UITableView (which is, as far as I read, not recommended)? Should I work with contentInsets on the UITableView and add the UIView container as a subview of my main UIViewController? I'm a bit lost after searching multiple solutions without finding the right one, so I hope you guys can help me out. Cheers!

Answer 1

Adding a UITextView is tricky because it's subclass of UIScrollView, just like UITableView, and adding a scroll view to another scroll view is not only difficult for the gesture recognisers to handle, but also for auto-layout.
What would make your life easier is to have just 1 table view in your view controller with different sections, and each section has a different type of cell.
What I like to do for this is declare an enum in my view controller:
class MyViewController: UIViewController {
private enum Section: Int, CaseIterable {
case foo
case bar
}
}
extension MyViewController: UITableViewDataSource {
func numberOfSections(in tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
return Section.allCases.count
}
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
guard let section = Section(rawValue: section) else { preconditionFailure() }
switch section {
case .foo:
return 1
case .bar:
return 4
}
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
guard let section = Section(rawValue: indexPath.section) else { preconditionFailure() }
let cell: UITableViewCell
switch section {
case .foo:
cell = ...
case .bar:
cell = ...
return cell
}
}
For the cells with long text you can just use a default cell style (in your XIB/storyboard) and set
cell.textLabel?.numberOfLines = 0
The table view should be able to automatically size itself to fit the entire text.
The only reason you should need to use a UITextView in your scenario is if you want the user to be able to edit the text. Otherwise save yourself a lot of pain and go with a UILabel.

Answer 2

You should add separate UIView at the bottom of main screen and add UITextView as a subview in it.
Add TableView above this container view so that it scrolls and textview is always visible at the bottom.