Handling an empty UITableView. Print a friendly message

Question

I have a UITableView that in some cases it is legal to be empty. So instead of showing the background image of the app, I would prefer to print a friendly message in the scr

Answer 1

Same as Jhonston's answer, but I preferred it as an extension:

import UIKit

extension UITableView {

    func setEmptyMessage(_ message: String) {
        let messageLabel = UILabel(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: self.bounds.size.width, height: self.bounds.size.height))
        messageLabel.text = message
        messageLabel.textColor = .black
        messageLabel.numberOfLines = 0
        messageLabel.textAlignment = .center
        messageLabel.font = UIFont(name: "TrebuchetMS", size: 15)
        messageLabel.sizeToFit()

        self.backgroundView = messageLabel
        self.separatorStyle = .none
    }

    func restore() {
        self.backgroundView = nil
        self.separatorStyle = .singleLine
    }
}

Usage:

override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
    if things.count == 0 {
        self.tableView.setEmptyMessage("My Message")
    } else {
        self.tableView.restore()
    }

    return things.count
}