How to add a custom cell to a dynamicly generated tableview? - swift

Question

Nearly during a week i'm trying to figure out how i can append a static-/custom tableviewcell to a dynamically generated tableview. I'm populating the cells based on the data i'm getting from the database. Basically what i'm trying to accomplish is like the following picture from the app ClassDojo:
As you may know and see, you can add add as many groups as you want with the ClassDojo app, but the latest cell, in this case Voeg een nieuwe klas toe, will always stay at the bottom of the tableview. That's exactly what i'm trying to do.
What i tried to do till this moment is trying to calculate the latest cell in the tableview and trying to append my custom cell, but unfortunately i couldn't get my head around it.
I would really appreciate if someone can help me out with this.
Thanks in advance.
Please let me know if you guys need any code.
---------EDITED POST---------
I did accomplish to assign my custom cell thanks to #Slayter, but now i'm facing with the problem that my custom cell is immediately overwritten by my dynamically created cells (with Alamofire).
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

ClassDojo iOS Engineer here! More than happy to share how we do this.
Like Slayter mentioned, we do
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
return myData.count + 1 // Add one for your custom cell
}
But in addition we also do the following:
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
var cell = nil;
if self.indexIsForCustomCell(indexPath) {
cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier(CustomCell.reuseIdentifier)
// Additional configuration
} else {
cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier(RegularCell.reuseIdentifier)
// Additional configuration
}
return cell
}
Where CustomCell looks something like this (not exact):
class CustomCell: UITableViewCell {
static let reuseIdentifier = "CustomCell"
// More code
}
And regular cell looks like:
class RegularCell: UITableViewCell {
static let reuseIdentifier = "RegularCell"
// More code
}
The reason your dynamic cells are getting overwritten is because of the line
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier(cellIdentifier, forIndexPath: indexPath) as UITableViewCell
Notice that you are using the same cellIdentifier regardless of whether or not it is the custom cell or the regular cells. This means that most likely you are doing the following:
self.tableView.registerClass(RegularCell.class, forIdentifier: "new group")
self.tableView.registerClass(CustomCell.class, forIdentifier: "new group")
When you should be doing:
self.tableView.registerClass(RegularCell.class, forIdentifier: RegularCell.reuseIdentifier)
self.tableView.registerClass(CustomCell.class, forIdentifier: CustomCell.reuseIdentifier)
OR
self.tableView.registerClass(RegularCell.class, forIdentifier: "regularCellReuseIdentifier")
self.tableView.registerClass(CustomCell.class, forIdentifier: "customCellReuseIdentifier")
By using the same identifier key, you are telling the UITableView to treat both cells as the same type. So when it needs to reclaim memory for a new cell being drawn on screen, it's going to use RegularCell and CustomCell interchangeably.
Hope this helped and thanks for checking out our App!
================= EDIT =================
Realized that I forgot to add the indexIsForCustomCell method. Here it is:
func indexIsForCustomCell(indexPath : NSIndexPath) -> Bool {
if self.myData.count > 0 {
return indexPath.section == 0 && indexPath.row == (self.myData.count+1)
}
return indexPath.section == 0 && indexPath.row == 0
}

Answer 2

It's pretty simple. You just need to tell the tableView to expect one more cell than what is in your data source.
Example
In your numberOfRowsInSection method, you will have something like this:
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
return myData.count + 1 // Add one for your custom cell
}
Then in your cellForRowAtIndexPath method you just need to add some custom logic for that indexPath
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier(cellIdentifier, forIndexPath: indexPath) as UITableViewCell
if indexPath.row < myData.count {
// configure cell as normal
} else {
// Add your custom cell logic here
}
return cell
}