how to retrieve all visible table section header views

Question

is there a way to get all the section header views that are visible?

something similar to UITableView\'s visibleCells instance method..

Answer 1

For a plain style table, you can get the visible rows. From those, get the set of visible sections. And from that, get the section header views from the table.

NSArray *visibleRows = [self.tableView indexPathsForVisibleRows];
NSMutableIndexSet *sections = [[NSMutableIndexSet alloc] init];
for (NSIndexPath *indexPath in visibleRows) {
    [sections addIndex:indexPath.section];
}

NSMutableArray *headerViews = [NSMutableArray array];
[sections enumerateIndexesUsingBlock:^(NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop) {
    UIView *view = [self.tableView headerViewForSection:idx];
    [headerViews addObject:view];
}];

Note: code not tested - may contain typos. This won't work 100% for a grouped style table.