Loading a custom TableViewCell from Storyboard instead of nib

Question

I am new to StackOverflow , and have been struggling with this issue for a while, really hoping someone out there can help and point me in the right direction.

I am trying to make a custom UITableView and a custom UITableViewCell - they will both go together to form a custom UITableView which I would like to reuse across multiple projects. So what I am trying to do is encapsulate all row + keyboard handling etc in the custom UITableView , and the cell's look in the custom UITableViewCell .

In a new StoryBoard, I added a UIViewController and added a UITableView , designed how I wanted the table to look and added a prototype cell to it. I designed this with the appropriate labels, fields and constraints. Lets call this custom look table "MyCustomTableWithCustomCell"

So now I have my custom table and what I want is to reuse this across other Storyboards.

I have found one solution (thanks stackoverflow!), but it isn't exactly what I wanted:

• I extracted the prototype cell from MyCustomTableWithCustomCell (cut and paste into an Empty Interface Builder document) and saved it as a xib.
• I then use this inside my custom UITableView via registerNib()
• I can create a new UIViewController in any Storyboard, add a UITableView , set its class to MyCustomTableWithCustomCell and it will do what I want

The problem is, I don't like how the cell is in a separate xib file, as it can't be previewed easily across different device sizes via IB auto-preview. Regardless of which device size I select, it always looks the same. It is also hard to see how the design fits with the rest of the screen unless I build and preview in Simulator every time I want to change anything. I'd prefer if the cell design could remain as part of the Prototype TableViewCell inside the blueprint Storyboard. Then I could easily modify it, preview across different device sizes etc.

So my question is, what is the best way to do the same thing, but instead of using a xib file, using a Prototype Table Cell from a Storyboard as the blueprint. Or in other words, is there a way to extract the Prototype cell into a Nib at runtime so that I can register it when I create my custom table.

Eg. something like:

    var myTableCellNib = myStoryBoard.myViewController.myTableView.myPrototypeCell.getNib()
    registerNib(myTableCellNib)

Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Answer 1

Make UITableViewCell Swift file -

import UIKit

    class ClassName: UITableViewCell {

    @IBOutlet weak var lblData: UILabel!


    override func awakeFromNib() {
        super.awakeFromNib()


    }

    override func setSelected(selected: Bool, animated: Bool) {
        super.setSelected(selected, animated: animated)

        // Configure the view for the selected state
    }

}

Go to storyboard - > View Controller -> Table View -> Drag and drop table view cell and design it, give class name as ClassName and identifier.

Go to cellForRowAtIndexPath

func tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UITableViewCell
{
    var cell : ClassName! = tableView.dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier("identifier") as! ClassName
    cell.lblData.text = ""
    return cell as ClassName
}