UIActivityIndicatorView in a UITableViewCell, not getting shown on selection

Question

I have an action that can take a second or two when a row is selected in a UITableViewCell. I want to give the user feedback when they select the cell that I'm doing something. Currently it just shows the tableviewcell highlight. I added a UIActivityIndicatorView to my view. I have it hidden by default. I try to do this in my didSelectRowAtIndexPath:

{
CustomCell *cell = (CustomCell *)[tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];
            cell.activityIndicator.hidden = NO;
            [cell.activityIndicator startAnimating];

// do long task

            [cell.activityIndicator stopAnimating];
            cell.activityIndicator.hidden = YES;
}

This code does not show my activityindicator. If I delete the

activityIndicator.hidden = YES;

in the

setCustomObject:(id)newObject

of my CustomCell class, I do see the indicator. It's just static though. I want to hide it until they click on the cell, animate while long task is running, then stop animating and hide again when long task is over. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Are you deselecting the row, or is the row staying highlighted? — Andy Obusek
@obuseme I have tried it a couple ways. I have tried it with the selectionStyle to be none, I have tried it with the deselectRowAtIndexPath called before the animation starts. Neither of them work. I tried to do in what you recommended in your answer, but that did not work either. If I try to combine what your answer was, with danielbeard's answer and do it on the main thread like that, I do not see it either. If I comment out the stop animating, and do what you said, and danielbeard's answer to start the animation, I do see the activity indicator when i pop back to the view that has cell — Crystal
@obuseme but that's obviously not what I want since I want it to animate, and then stop animating by the time i return to that view. The long task is setting up the next view to show and i wanted to show an indicator for that task. — Crystal

danielbeard danielbeard · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-03T00:26:46

Try updating the activity indicator in the main thread

dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
    cell.activityIndicator.hidden = NO;
    [cell.activityIndicator startAnimating];       
 });

 //do long task

 dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
    cell.activityIndicator.hidden = YES;
    [cell.activityIndicator stopAnimating];       
 });

UIActivityIndicatorView in a UITableViewCell, not getting shown on selection

2 Answers