How to customise header section in static cell?

Question

I want to customise the header section in my application but it's in static cell. I tried to make one cell to be my header by including identifier and add a new file to control that cell but that doesn't work. I tried to drag an object into new file but it's can't be done. So how to customise section header? Is my way of approach is good?

Answer 1

There are a couple of ways to customize the header section in a UITableView. For instance, if all you want to do is change the text, you can do so in the attributes inspector while making sure your TableViewSection is selected:

However, if you want the ability to do customizations such as text size, tont, capitalizations - any customizations inherent to UILabels, you'll need to override this method from the UITableViewController:

  override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, willDisplayHeaderView view: UIView, forSection section: Int) {
    let header = view as! UITableViewHeaderFooterView
    header.textLabel.textColor = UIColor(red: 243/255, green: 153/255, blue: 193/255, alpha: 1.0)
    header.textLabel.font = UIFont(name: "Helvetica Neue", size: 18)
    header.textLabel.text = "About Us"
    header.textLabel.frame = header.frame
    header.textLabel.textAlignment = NSTextAlignment.Left
  }

For example, in the code above, I took the header that was passed as a parameter and configured the textColor, font, text, alignment - really anything you can do on the UILabel can be done here.

Before customization

After customization

Answer 2

Also you can customise header section use Nib. Simple example below.

HeaderView.xib (Screenshot)

HeaderView.swift

import UIKit

class HeaderView: UITableViewHeaderFooterView {

    @IBOutlet weak var titleLabel: UILabel!
    @IBOutlet weak var titleBackgroundView: UIView!

     static var nib: UINib {
       return UINib(nibName: identifier, bundle: nil)
     }

     static var identifier: String {
       return String(describing: self)
     }

    override func awakeFromNib() {
      titleBackgroundView.layer.shadowColor = UIColor.gray.cgColor
      titleBackgroundView.layer.shadowOpacity = 0.5
      titleBackgroundView.layer.shadowOffset = CGSize(width: 0, height: 5)
      titleBackgroundView.layer.shadowRadius = 5
    }
}

ProfileTableViewController.swift

import UIKit

class ProfileTableViewController: UITableViewController {

    override func viewDidLoad() {
      super.viewDidLoad()
        tableView.register(HeaderView.nib, forHeaderFooterViewReuseIdentifier: HeaderView.identifier)
    }


    override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, viewForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> UIView? {

      let headerView = tableView.dequeueReusableHeaderFooterView(withIdentifier: HeaderView.identifier) as! HeaderView
        switch section {
        case 0:
          headerView.titleLabel.text = "Profile"
          return headerView
        case 1:
          headerView.titleLabel.text = "Social"
          return headerView
        default:
          return UIView()
    }

    override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, heightForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> CGFloat {
        return 50
    }
}

Simulator (Screenshot)