Have a reloadData for a UITableView animate when changing

Question

I have a UITableView that has two modes. When we switch between the modes I have a different number of sections and cells per section. Ideally, it would do some cool anima

Answer 1

The way to approach this is to tell the tableView to remove and add rows and sections with the

insertRowsAtIndexPaths:withRowAnimation:,
deleteRowsAtIndexPaths:withRowAnimation:,
insertSections:withRowAnimation: and
deleteSections:withRowAnimation:

methods of UITableView.

When you call these methods, the table will animate in/out the items you requested, then call reloadData on itself so you can update the state after this animation. This part is important - if you animate away everything but don't change the data returned by the table's dataSource, the rows will appear again after the animation completes.

So, your application flow would be:

[self setTableIsInSecondState:YES];

[myTable deleteSections:[NSIndexSet indexSetWithIndex:0] withRowAnimation:YES]];

As long as your table's dataSource methods return the correct new set of sections and rows by checking [self tableIsInSecondState] (or whatever), this will achieve the effect you're looking for.