Number of rows in UILabel - iphone

Question

I have UITableView with custom cells, which contain uilabels.
I am using it to show comments and it must have flexible height.
How can I do it?
I have code, which counting number of rows with help of uilabel.text length, but it is wrong way. Have you any ideas?

Answer 1

Use UILabel with numberOfLines set to zero.
Then, for making sure that your label actually fits into the cell, get the dimensions from the NSString UIKit extension like this;
CGFloat cellWidth = 320.0f; //example width....
labelSize = [label.text sizeWithFont:label.font constrainedToSize:CGSizeMake(cellWidth, FLT_MAX)];
From the NSString reference;
sizeWithFont:constrainedToSize:
Returns the size of the string if it were rendered and constrained to
the specified size.
- (CGSize)sizeWithFont:(UIFont *)font constrainedToSize:(CGSize)size
Parameters font The font to use for computing the string size. size
The maximum acceptable size for the string. This value is used to
calculate where line breaks and wrapping would occur. Return Value The
width and height of the resulting string’s bounding box.

Answer 2

Create a class method of the comment cell class that calculates the height of text needed for cell's height. Also create a class method that returns cell's default font, so you can always calculate proper cell height in cell's layoutSubviews and in UITableViewDelegate's cellHeightForRowAtIndexPath methods.
e.g.
+(UIFont *) defaultCommentFont {
return [UIFont italicSystemFontOfSize:13];
}
+(CGSize) sizeOfComment:(NSString *)commentText maxWidth:(CGFloat)maxWidth {
return [commentText sizeWithFont:[[self class] defaultCommentFont] constrainedToSize:CGSizeMake(maxWidth, MAX_FLOAT)];
}
- (void)layoutSubviews {
[super layoutSubviews];
static CGFloat margin = <# margin #>;
CGSize commentSize = [[self class] sizeOfComment:self.commentText maxWidth:self.contentView.frame.size.width - 2 * margin];
self.commentLabel.frame = CGRectMake(margin, margin, commentSize.width, commentSize.height);
}
(sorry if there are any mistakes in the code - using only the eye-based parser ;))
Having this, when you try to return a proper height of cell in UITableViewDelegate's method, you don't have to use cellForRowAtIndexPath: method, because this, in some cases, can cause an uncontrolled recursion resulting in stack overflow.
And, like Till said, set the comment label's property numberOfLines to 0.