Complex resize of Cells in UITableViewCell - iphone

Question

I'm coding a universal iOS app (iPhone & iPad) that's mostly based on a TableView. Every cell has multiple text zones that I need to resize in height depending on the content. I define all the tables and cells in Storyboard and I really want to keep it that way (much easier to play with the sizes graphically see what it's going to be).
The problem is that I need a lot of info to compute the final size of the cell (storyboard heights of cell and subviews, label widths, font size..). I used to just have constants in my code where I would hand write the values but:
it's a pain to change every time I make a storyboard change
my labels can have different width (different type of cells, iPhone/iPad) and I have many of them so in that case it's really a ton of constants to keep track of
I use that solution:
In the Cell I have static variables that are set once to remember the sizes (it's taken from storyboard then so that's nice):
static float cellDefaultHeight;
static float contactsLabelDefaultHeight;
static float contactsLabelDefaultWidth;
static float contactsLabelFontSize;
-(void) awakeFromNib
{
static dispatch_once_t onceToken;
dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
// instantiate static variables with the constants
cellDefaultHeight = self.contentView.bounds.size.height;
contactsLabelDefaultHeight = self.contacts.bounds.size.height;
contactsLabelDefaultWidth = self.contacts.bounds.size.width;
contactsLabelFontSize = self.contacts.font.pointSize;
});
}
+ (CGFloat) heightForCellWithData:(NSDictionary *)data
{
// use constants and data to compute the height
return height
}
In the Table before computing any cell size I have to instantiate one to set the static variables:
- (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView
heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
// get one instance before any size computation
// or the constant won't be there
static dispatch_once_t onceToken;
dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
static NSString *CellIdentifier = #"identifier";
[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
});
return [MyCell heightForCellWithData:theData];
}
It feels so hackish I feel I'm completely missing something, but I couldn't think of something else. Is there a good way to do it?
Thanks!

Answer 1

First of all I think you should use custom cell for doing such things. Now every time if you need to change the width/height you just need the bounds of that cell. And regarding label and text fields width/height you can do like (self.textview.bounds) and then you can set the offset according to your need. This is not the hack but pure coding according to logic as every time if you change the device it will take the bounds accordingly so no need to remember anything.
Hope this works :)