Automatically Delete rows in a UITableView: Swift3 - swift

Question

I have a UITableView which contains rows of posts that are timestamped based on when they enter into my database. I want to have the posts (rows) of each cell automatically delete after a certain amount of time has passed. Currently this is what I have towards this goal:
func deletePost(timer: Timer) {
for post in posts {
let startTime = Date(timeIntervalSince1970: TimeInterval(post.time))
let date = Date()
let endTime = startTime + 25
let call = Calendar.current
let componentsCurrent = call.dateComponents([.year, .month, .day, .hour, .minute, .second], from: date)
var components = DateComponents()
components.hour = componentsCurrent.hour
components.minute = componentsCurrent.minute
components.second = componentsCurrent.second
components.year = componentsCurrent.year
components.month = componentsCurrent.month
components.day = componentsCurrent.day
let currentTime = call.date(from: components)!
print(currentTime)
print(" 2" , endTime)
if currentTime.timeIntervalSince1970 == endTime.timeIntervalSince1970 {
timer.invalidate()
print("ENDDDDD")
posts.removeLast()
tableView.reloadData()
}
}
}
The problem I am seeing is that current date only records the date once but doesn't continue to update. I have looked through other posts regarding timers and I have implemented them however it has not worked within this context. I assume once I can get these variables to equal the other code will be straight forward.

Answer 1

cellForRowAt is not the place for any kind of logic such as this. Its only purpose is to provide the requested cell. That's all.
What you want is to setup a timer, say once a minute (or some other appropriate timespan). When the timer goes off, scan your data source for rows that should be removed. Delete the appropriate values from the data source and update the table view accordingly using deleteRows passing in an array of IndexPath that correspond to the removed entries.

Answer 2

Your code will check if it's time to delete something only when your tableView is
reloadingData(); .
//That's not good, because `cellForRow`
//is called as many times as this method returns
override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
return data.count;
}
You should remove the data from your array, and then call tableView.reloadData();
To do that by specific time, you can :
timeToRemoveCell = 10:00;
and check this time in viewWillAppear.
or you can make a timer as rmaddy said.