tableView in UITableViewController is nil after init

Question

I have following code in a subclass of UITableViewController. Under iOS 5.1 it works fine, but under iOS 6, self.tableView is nil (both in simulator and on real device). Am I doing it wrong? Why isn't the view set straight away after the init?

- (id)initWithStyle:(UITableViewStyle)style
{
    self = [super initWithStyle:style];

    if (self) 
    {
        UIView * bck = [[UIView alloc] init];
        [bck setBackgroundColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];
        self.tableView.backgroundView = bck;
        [bck release];
    }

    return self;
}

EDIT:

I've nailed down the problem:

I've got class

AccountsListViewController_iPad

which is subclass of

AccountsListViewController : UITableViewController

AccountsListViewController has it's tableView & view loaded after init (as I would expect). AccountsListViewController_iPad on the other hand has it's view and tableView equal to nil. I've removed everything from AccountsListViewController_iPad so now it looks as follows:

.h
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
#import "AccountsListViewController.h"
@interface AccountsListViewController_iPad : AccountsListViewController
@end

.m
#import "AccountsListViewController_iPad.h"
@implementation AccountsListViewController_iPad
@end

And still it's view is nil. In my opinion, it should behave exactly the same as its superclass, but it doesn't.

Benedict Cohen Benedict Cohen · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-18T11:01:12

I suspect this is because the table view is not load until the view is loaded. You should move the view setup to viewDidLoad.

The only 'view' property you should set up in init methods is .navigationItem (although I think UINavigationItem is probably best considered part of the controller rather than view).

tableView in UITableViewController is nil after init

2 Answers