Static Table View - iphone

Question

I am creating a static table view (must be compatible with iOS 4 - so I can't use iOS 5's method).
The way I have it is that I have two sections; the first has one cell, and the second has two cells. I made two arrays, one with the title of the only cell in the first section, and the second with both titles for both cells in the second section. So my dictionary looks like this:
(NSDictionary *) {
First = (
Title1 < --- Array (1 item)
);
Second = (
"Title1", < --- Array (2 items)
Title2
);
}
The issue I have is that I need to return number of rows in a section using tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section. So my question is, how do I retrieve the section from the dictionary using NSInteger section? I would also have to do the same thing in tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath.
Thank you

Answer 1

If you don't understand how dictionaries work, I'd recommend simplifying the problem. Create one array for each section, then inside your delegate methods use a switch() statement to call [array count] for the row count etc. For the section count you could still use the original dictionary with [[dictionary allKeys] count].
EDIT:
I just saw #fzwo recommends the same thing in two comments

Answer 2

Your best bet is an array of arrays, as has been mentioned. To avoid the complexity with dictionaries, create two NSArray ivars for the table data and the section titles.
// in viewDidLoad
tableData = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:
[NSArray arrayWithObjects:
#"Row one title",
#"Row two title",
nil],
[NSArray arrayWithObjects:
#"Row one title",
#"Row two title",
#"Row three title",
nil],
nil];
sectionTitles = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:
#"Section one title",
#"Section two title",
nil];
// in numberOfSections:
return tableData.count;
// in numberOfRowsInSection:
return [[tableData objectAtIndex:section] count];
// in titleForHeaderInSection:
return [sectionTitles objectAtIndex:section];
// in cellForRowAtIndexPath:
...
cell.textLabel.text = [[tableData objectAtIndex:indexPath.section]
objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
You could use other objects instead of the row titles if you need more data available to your cell.

Answer 3

To get the number of rows in your section you can use the following:
tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
NSString *key = [[dictionary allKeys] objectAtIndex: section];
return [[dictionary objectForKey:key] count];
}
And to get the cell value:
tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
NSString *key = [[dictionary allKeys] objectAtIndex: indexPath.section];
NSArray *values = [dictionary objectForKey:key];
NSString *value = [values objectAtIndex: indexPath.row];
// code to create a cell
return cell;
}