UITableViewController tableView Header in IB

Question

I have searched, and can find nothing to explain this. I can't be the first to have this issue... Takin' about a tableView header and footer here, NOT section header.

Created a UITableViewController with XIB. Added a UIView as a header to the tableView in IB. I've done this a hundred times before when the tableView was added to a UIViewController instead of wrapped in a UITableViewController. When I build, the header view does not appear. If I roll-my-own header UIView in the viewDidLoad, it does appear.

So, I moved the header UIView to the root level of the XIB file. Hooked it up to an IBOutlet property. Assign it to self.tableView in the viewDidLoad. Nothing. In fact, the header UIView is nil. It's like it doesn't really load from the nib.

Ideas?

Answer 1

Well, you learn something new every day. I was init-ing the UITableViewController instance with [[aTVC alloc] init] This works fine for ordinary UIViewControllers, but if you use it with a UITableViewController without specifically initWithNibName it seems to have a mind of its own, and creates self.tableView out of thin air.

So, when allocating a UITableViewController from a NIB, use initWithNibName:

Hope this saves others some heartburn.