Horizontal UITableView

Question

I want implement a layout in my ipad application that has a uitable view that scrolls left and right rather then up and down :

So rather than

row 1 row 2 row 3 ( scrolling vertically ) It would be : row 1, row2, row 3 (scrolling horizontally )

I've seen that UItableView is designed to only do vertical scrolling so doing a transform does not give the desired effect. Is there a standard way to do this taking advantage of a datasource provider like uitableview provides?
I basically want to do somthing similar to what the BBC News reader app on the Ipad does with the list of stories to select from.

Thanks

Answer 1

I have published sample code that demonstrates one approach for implementing horizontally scrolling table views using transforms. It's called EasyTableView and provides the same interface for both vertically and horizontally scrolling table views.

Answer 2

This is the method that I use:

1) Implement you own subclass of UITableView and override its initWithCoder: method as shown below:

- (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder {     assert([aDecoder isKindOfClass:[NSCoder class]]);      self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder];      if (self) {          const CGFloat k90DegreesCounterClockwiseAngle = (CGFloat) -(90 * M_PI / 180.0);          CGRect frame = self.frame;         self.transform = CGAffineTransformRotate(CGAffineTransformIdentity, k90DegreesCounterClockwiseAngle);         self.frame = frame;          }      assert(self);     return self; } 

2) Create your own UITableViewCell class and override initWithCoder: again:

- (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder {     assert([aDecoder isKindOfClass:[NSCoder class]]);      self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder];      if (self) {          const CGFloat k90DegreesClockwiseAngle = (CGFloat) (90 * M_PI / 180.0);          self.transform = CGAffineTransformRotate(CGAffineTransformIdentity, k90DegreesClockwiseAngle);     }      assert(self);     return self; } 

3) Now you can create a UITableView element in IB and set its class to be "MyHorizontalTableView" in the identity inspector.

4) Create your UITableViewCell element in IB and set its class to be "MyHorizontalTableViewCell" in the identity inspector.

And that's it.

This would work by overriding other initializers too in case you prefer not to use IB to instantiate your table view or cell.

A sample project that I built around this concept can be found in GitHub.