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

I made a few changes so that we don't need to check on the count manually, also i added constraints for the label so that nothing goes wrong no matter how large is the message as shown below:

extension UITableView {

    fileprivate func configureLabelLayout(_ messageLabel: UILabel) {
        messageLabel.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        let labelTop: CGFloat = CGFloat(UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad ? 25:15)
        messageLabel.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: backgroundView?.topAnchor ?? NSLayoutAnchor(), constant: labelTop).isActive = true
        messageLabel.widthAnchor.constraint(equalTo: backgroundView?.widthAnchor ?? NSLayoutAnchor(), constant: -20).isActive = true
        messageLabel.centerXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: backgroundView?.centerXAnchor ?? NSLayoutAnchor(), constant: 0).isActive = true
    }

    fileprivate func configureLabel(_ message: String) {
        let messageLabel = UILabel(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: self.bounds.size.width, height: self.bounds.size.height))
        messageLabel.textColor = .black
        messageLabel.numberOfLines = 0
        messageLabel.textAlignment = .center
        let fontSize = CGFloat(UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad ? 25:15)
        let font: UIFont = UIFont(name: "MyriadPro-Regular", size: fontSize) ?? UIFont()
        messageLabel.font = font
        messageLabel.text = message
        self.backgroundView = UIView()
        self.backgroundView?.addSubview(messageLabel)
        configureLabelLayout(messageLabel)
        self.separatorStyle = .none
    }

    func setEmptyMessage(_ message: String, _ isEmpty: Bool) {
        if isEmpty { // instead of making the check in every TableView DataSource in the project
            configureLabel(message)
        }
        else {
            restore()
        }

    }

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

Usage

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
        let message: String = "The list is empty."
        ticketsTableView.setEmptyMessage(message, tickets.isEmpty)
        return self.tickets.count
    }