How do you load custom UITableViewCells from Xib files?

Question

The question is simple: How do you load custom UITableViewCell from Xib files? Doing so allows you to use Interface Builder to design your cells. The answer app

Answer 1

Reloading the NIB is expensive. Better to load it once, then instantiate the objects when you need a cell. Note that you can add UIImageViews etc to the nib, even multiple cells, using this method (Apple's "registerNIB" iOS5 allows only one top level object - Bug 10580062 "iOS5 tableView registerNib: overly restrictive"

So my code is below - you read in the NIB once (in initialize like I did or in viewDidload - whatever. From then on, you instantiate the nib into objects then pick the one you need. This is much more efficient than loading the nib over and over.

static UINib *cellNib;

+ (void)initialize
{
    if(self == [ImageManager class]) {
        cellNib = [UINib nibWithNibName:@"ImageManagerCell" bundle:nil];
        assert(cellNib);
    }
}

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    static NSString *cellID = @"TheCell";

    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:cellID];
    if(cell == nil) {
        NSArray *topLevelItems = [cellNib instantiateWithOwner:nil options:nil];
        NSUInteger idx = [topLevelItems indexOfObjectPassingTest:^BOOL(id obj, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop)
                            {
                                UITableViewCell *cell = (UITableViewCell *)obj;
                                return [cell isKindOfClass:[UITableViewCell class]] && [cell.reuseIdentifier isEqualToString:cellID];
                            } ];
        assert(idx != NSNotFound);
        cell = [topLevelItems objectAtIndex:idx];
    }
    cell.textLabel.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Howdie %d", indexPath.row];

    return cell;
}