UIScrollview calling superviews layoutSubviews when scrolling?

Question

Hello,

I added a UITableView as a subview to a custom UIView class I'm working on. However I noticed that whenever I scroll the table it calls my classes layoutSubviews. I'm pretty sure its the UIScrollview that the table is inheriting from which is actually doing this but wanted to know if there is a way to disable this functionality and if not why is it happening? I don't understand why when you scroll a scrollview it needs its superview to layout its subviews.

Code:

@implementation CustomView
- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame {
    if ((self = [super initWithFrame:frame])) {
        self.clipsToBounds = YES;

        UITableView *tableView = [[UITableView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.0, 15.0, 436.0, 132.0) style:UITableViewStylePlain];
        tableView.dataSource = self;
        tableView.delegate = self;
        tableView.separatorStyle = UITableViewCellSeparatorStyleNone;
        tableView.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
        tableView.showsVerticalScrollIndicator = NO;
        tableView.contentInset = UIEdgeInsetsMake(kRowHeight, 0.0, kRowHeight, 0.0);
        tableView.tag = componentIndex;

        [self addSubview:tableView];
        [tableView release];
    }
    return self;
}
- (void)layoutSubviews {
    // This is called everytime I scroll the tableview
}

@end

Answer 1

Not sure i understand your issue correctly but when you scroll a tableview it removes the cells not shown from the memory and loads them again when they are scrolled back into visibility (cells are allocated on demand, only the visible ones) , in effect doing what you seem to be describing.

Answer 2

Yes, a UIScrollView does call layoutsubviews whenever it scrolls. I could've sworn this was stated in the documentation somewhere, but I guess not.

Anyways, the prevailing idea for this is that a UIScrollView should layout its stuff so that views that currently can't be seen shouldn't be laid out. As users scroll in the scroll view, it should add and remove subviews as necessary. I'm guessing this is what TableViews use to enqueue table cells that get hidden.

Is there any reason why you would care if layoutsubviews gets called or not?