How do I select a UITableViewCell by default?

Question

I have created a UITableView and would like a specific UITableViewCell to appear selected (blue) when the view is loaded.

Answer 1

Sometimes, when you're not in a UIViewController, you have no viewWillAppear, and sometimes, you created your UITableView programmatically.

The easy solution is to implement this delegate method:

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView 
        willDisplayCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell 
        forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

    if (self.selectedIndex == indexPath.row) {
        cell.selected = YES;
    }
}

It's does not work in the cellForRowAtIndexPath because the cell is not yet displayed. and the setSelected method is called just when this one is displayed.