How to subclass UITableViewController in Swift

Question

I want to subclass UITableViewController and be able to instantiate it by calling a default initializer with no arguments.

class TestViewController: UITableV         


        

Answer 1

Props to matt for a great explanation. I've made use of both matt's and @Nick Snyder's solutions, however I ran into a case in which neither would quite work, because I needed to (1) initialize let fields, (2) use init(style: .Grouped) (without getting a runtime error), and (3) use the built-in refreshControl (from UITableViewController). My workaround was to introduce an intermediate class MyTableViewController in ObjC, then use that class as the base of my table view controllers.

MyTableViewController.h

#import 
// extend but only override 1 designated initializer
@interface MyTableViewController : UITableViewController
- (instancetype)initWithStyle:(UITableViewStyle)style NS_DESIGNATED_INITIALIZER;
@end

MyTableViewController.m:

#import "MyTableViewController.h"
// clang will warn about missing designated initializers from
// UITableViewController without the next line.  In this case
// we are intentionally doing this so we disregard the warning.
#pragma clang diagnostic ignored "-Wobjc-designated-initializers"
@implementation MyTableViewController
- (instancetype)initWithStyle:(UITableViewStyle)style {
    return [super initWithStyle:style];
}
@end

Add the following to Project's Bridging-Header.h

#import "MyTableViewController.h"

Then use in swift. Example: "PuppyViewController.swift":

class PuppyViewController : MyTableViewController {
    let _puppyTypes : [String]
    init(puppyTypes : [String]) {
        _puppyTypes = puppyTypes // (1) init let field (once!)
        super.init(style: .Grouped) // (2) call super with style and w/o error
        self.refreshControl = MyRefreshControl() // (3) setup refresh control
    }
    // ... rest of implementation ...
}