Loading contents of TableView Controller after showing Tab

Question

Hello,

I have a 4 tabbar application. The second tab has a tableviewController. When i select the second tab the tableview is displayed with it's contents and it works fine.

The problem is that that data is comming from the network and it talks 2-3 seconds to load. So when i press the second tab it goes there after the contents have been loaded.

How can i show an empty tableview (i'll put an activity indicator) and then load and show the contents?

Teo

Answer 1

When you start loading your data, I would add the activity indicator on top of the table view and return 0 from -numberOfSectionsInTableView: and -tableView:numberOfRowsInSection:.

Once the data is loaded, remove the activity indicator, tell the UITableView to -reloadData: and start returning the correct values for the number of sections and rows.

Answer 2

I tried using viewWillAppear but the UI doesn't show up until it's finished. Also i tried -viweDidAppear with the same effect. So how can you execute something after the tableview shows up?

Teo

Answer 3

I found that BrowserViewController in Apple's BonjourWeb sample code does what you're seeking. I was able to pattern my tableview after this sample code successfully, so give it a try: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/samplecode/BonjourWeb/Introduction/Intro.html