UITextField in UITableViewCell - adding new cells

Question

I am trying to create a table view similar to the YouTube video uploader view in the Photo Gallery on the iPhone.

Here's the basic setup.

I have a custom UITableViewCell created that contains a UITextField. Displaying the cell in my table works great and I can edit the text with no problems. I created an event hook so I can view when the text has changed in the text field.

[textField addTarget:self action:@selector(textFieldDidChange:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventEditingChanged]

What I want to do is this. When the user first edits the text I want to insert a new cell into the table view below the current cell (newIndexPath is calculated prior to the proper position):

[self.tableView beginUpdates];
[self.tableView insertRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:newIndexPath] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationBottom];
[self.tableView endUpdates];

Problem is when I run the cell insert code the cell is created but the text field's text updated briefly, but then the keyboard is dismissed and the text field is set back to an empty string.

Any help would be awesome! I've been banging my head about this one all day.

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)table numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    if (section == 0)
        return 2;
    else
        return self.tags.count;
}

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    ...
    cell = (SimpleTextFieldTableCell *)[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:tagCellIdentifier];

    if (cell == nil)
    {
        cell = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"SimpleTextFieldTableCell" owner:nil options:nil] lastObject];
    }

    ((SimpleTextFieldTableCell *)cell).textField.delegate = self;
    ((SimpleTextFieldTableCell *)cell).textField.tag = indexPath.row;
    ((SimpleTextFieldTableCell *)cell).textField.text = [self.tags objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
    [((SimpleTextFieldTableCell *)cell).textField addTarget:self action:@selector(textFieldDidChange:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventEditingChanged];

    cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCellSelectionStyleNone;
}

- (void)textFieldDidChange:(id)sender
{
    UITextField *textField = sender;

    [self.tags replaceObjectAtIndex:textField.tag withObject:textField.text];
    if (textField.text.length == 1)
    {
        [textField setNeedsDisplay];
        [self addTagsCell];
    }
}

- (void)addTagsCell
{
    NSString *newTag = @"";
    [self.tags addObject:newTag];

    NSIndexPath *newIndexPath = [NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:self.tags.count - 1 inSection:1];
    [self.tableView beginUpdates];
    [self.tableView insertRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:newIndexPath] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationBottom];
    [self.tableView endUpdates];
}

Answer 1

Only thing i can think of here is that perhaps when you insert a row the whole table view is reloaded, if you did not add your cell properly to the cell queue, they wont come back in the state that they were , therefore you are seeing empty cells as a result of the insert, just a guess, hope it helps.

Answer 2

Quick update:

Shouldn't matter but I notices you don't need:

[self.tableView beginUpdates]
[self.tableView endUpdates]

since you are performing one operation. Not sure if that matters (it shouldn't).

---

Update:

I should have said that such issues are pretty common. Here is a post related to your issue

http://www.bdunagan.com/2008/12/08/uitextview-in-a-uitableview-on-the-iphone/

Also, others have abstracted this out. Specifically I have tried this with no such issues:

http://furbo.org/2009/04/30/matt-gallagher-deserves-a-medal/

You could use: http://github.com/joehewitt/three20/

But it has a bit of a learning curve.

Another Stackoverflow question tackling this issue:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/376372/editing-a-uitextfield-inside-a-uitableviewcell-fails

Excuse me not answering your issue directly, but I think that the solution might be contained in one of these links.

---

Original Answer:

Try:

[newTextField setNeedsDisplay];

Sometimes the tableviews can be "sticky" with updating UITextView/UITextField content.

If that doesn't work, be sure that you're backing model is also updated properly. You haven't displayed any code indicating you updated the model (although I assume you did, otherwise it would have likely thrown an exception).