I have a complex settings style table where individual cells represent different aspects of a data model class. Users can click into a cell and edit individual attributes, such as say if I have a user class, a name, date of birth, etc. My question is, do I need to have an instance of UITextField for each unique cell? Can I just create one subclass of UITableViewCell, set up a delegate, and determine where it is from there?
What's the best approach?
I would recommend creating a subclass of a UITableViewCell. You could do this either purely programaticaly, or if you have an aversion to CGRect's (or want to be able to drag and drop your layout around) with a combination of a XIB and a custom class file.
The Subclass would then contain the UITextFiled's you need, and can also have a delegate or datasource that you can use to point it to your data model object.
It's better to have the UITableViewController you are using act as the text view delegate for each cell - make sure you are re-using cells and when you create them or reuse them attach your class as the delegate for the UITextViews you have via a custom UITableViewCell class with accessors to get to the UITextViews.
If you set cell classes as text delegates you may run into issues if the user scrolls a table view cell off screen with the keyboard up.