How can I modify the appearance of 'empty' cells in plain UITableView?

Question

If you have a plain (not grouped) UITableView with a single row, the rest of the screen is filled with blank or empty cells. How do you change the appearance of these blank

Answer 1

Based on samvermette's answer, but modified to use a background image directly rather than compositing an image from a UITableViewCell subclass. Sam's answer is good, but it will be less performant than just creating a background image directly.

Create a UIView subclass -- in this example I called it CustomTiledView -- and add the following code to the class:

- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"tableview_empty_cell_image"];
CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
CGContextScaleCTM (context, 1, -1); 
CGContextDrawTiledImage(context, 
                        CGRectMake(0, 0, rect.size.width, image.size.height), 
                        [image CGImage]); 
}

Add the following code to your tableviewcontroller:

- (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView 
           heightForFooterInSection:(NSInteger)section {
    // this can be any size, but it should be 1) multiple of the 
    // background image height so the last empty cell drawn
    // is not cut off, 2) tall enough that footer cells
    // cover the entire tableview height when the tableview
    // is empty, 3) tall enough that pulling up on an empty
    // tableview does not reveal the background.
        return BACKGROUND_IMAGE_HEIGHT * 9; // create 9 empty cells
}

- (UIView *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView 
            viewForFooterInSection:(NSInteger)section {
    CustomTiledView *footerView = [[CustomTiledView alloc] init];
    return [footerView autorelease];
}

Finally, you'll need to set the bottom content inset of your tableview to the negative of the value returned from -tableView:heightForFooterInsection: In this example it would be -1*BACKGROUND_IMAGE_HEIGHT*9. You can set the bottom content inset either from the Size Inspector of Interface Builder or by setting the self.tableView.contentInset property from the tableviewcontroller.

Cheers!