How to show/hide UISearchController searchBar in UITableView?

Question

In my app I have the following setup:

• UIViewController
• UITableView as a subview

• tableView has a UISearchController and a search bar is a table header view

  _tableView.tableHeaderView = _searchController.searchBar;

What I want to achieve is:

• when this screen appears the searchBar is not there
• tap some button (nav controller right button for example) the search bar appears (maybe animates from top or something)
• tap that button again the search bar hides

when the search bar is not showing the table looks like that bar was never there ( there is no empty header cell or anything like that)

Any kind of help is highly appreciated!

Answer 1

Figured this myself, maybe not the most optimal solution, but if anyone has better idea I would happily accept is as an answer.

-(void)searchButtonDidTap:(UIButton*)aButton
{    
     if (!_searchController){

     _searchController = [[UISearchController alloc] initWithSearchResultsController:nil];

    _searchController.searchResultsUpdater = self;
    [_searchController.searchBar sizeToFit];
    _tableView.tableHeaderView = _searchController.searchBar;

    _searchController.delegate = self;
    _searchController.dimsBackgroundDuringPresentation = NO;

    self.definesPresentationContext = YES;
    _searchController.active = NO;

    _searchController.searchResultsUpdater = self;
    _searchController.dimsBackgroundDuringPresentation = NO;
    self.definesPresentationContext = YES;
    _tableView.tableHeaderView = _searchController.searchBar;

    _searchController.searchBar.delegate = self;
    }
    else
    {
    _searchController.active = NO;
    [_searchController removeFromParentViewController];
    _searchController = nil;
    _tableView.tableHeaderView = nil;
    }

    [_tableView reloadData];
}

Answer 2

There are many ways you could do this but I would do something like the following:

1. Update the viewForHeaderInSection method to only show the header when a new class property called _showHeader is true:

   if(_showHeader) { // insert code for showing the header: // return HeaderCell; } else { return nil; }

2. When the user clicks the button to show the header, set some variable and call reloadData on the tableView:

   _showHeader = YES; [_tableView reloadData];