When I call [tableView reloadData] the function - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
It looks like you are never setting the delegate and datasource properties on your tableview, no? You're implementing the methods in those protocols inside tableview.m but not setting the two properties to self hence calling reloadData having no effect.
Does this help?
Edit:
Looks like you have a tableView property set on a subclass of UITableView and hooked up to an interface builder file. This is an odd setup (a tableview within a tableview). Usually you would have something like a UIViewController subclass hooked up to an XIB and set an
@property (nonatomic, strong) IBOutlet UITableView * tableView
in that subclass, or something similar. And then handle the data fetching and tableview delegate/datasource inside that viewcontroller subclass.
But here, because of the nested UITableViews it's not as straightforward. Is there a reason for this design? I recommend moving to something like I describe above to help bring clarity to the setup.
Also, try adding some NSLog statements into your init method to see if the tableview != nil and the delegate and datasource properties have been set. My suspicion is that the connection is not being made.
Also, unrelated to the problem at hand, you no longer have to manually @synthesize ivar = _ivar, it will be done for you automatically using the underscore convention.