Adding image to UIImageView in UITableViewCell modifies the image view height undesirably

Question

I have a UIImageView inside a UITableViewCell. The cell height changes based on the number of lines of text in a UILabel using estimated row heights. I want this image to be centered vertically in the cell, with a fixed width, and height >= 40 and <=80. As the cell height increases I want the image to increase to that max height then stop, always remaining vertically centered. To do this, I added those two height constraints and the width constraint, plus constraints to the top and bottom of the cell with a constant of 5 for some padding and a priority of 250. Adding a background color to the image view you can see it is being laid out as expected. But when I set the image on the image view, the height is changing unexpectedly.

With 3 lines in the label:

• without an image: image view is ~60pt tall as expected
• with an image: image view is 80pt tall - expected it to be ~60

With 6 lines in the label:

• without an image: image view is 80pt tall as expected
• with an image: image view is 80pt tall as expected

Why is that? How can I make sure the image in the image view doesn't affect the image view size, as I want the cell height determined by the auto layout constraints to determine it?

Here's a sample project.

Answer 1

While I wasn't able to get the expected image view height using those auto layout constraints, I did achieve the goal by using a single height constraint and manually setting its constant in layoutSubviews of the UITableViewCell, calculated to be max(40, min(contentView.bounds.height - 5 * 2, 80)). And then added a CenterY constraint to the superview to keep it vertically centered. Now adding an image to the image view doesn't unexpectedly change the image view height.