How to customize tableView Section View - iPhone

Question

I know how to customize the tableViewCell.

I have seen many application customizing the tableView Cell.

Similarly, I want to customize TableView Section Header

"Suppose - A section name should be in different font, It has different background images etc."

Is it possible How?

In which method Should I implement the code?

Answer 1

Instead of using the normal method

- (NSString *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView titleForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section 

You want to implement this one:

- (UIView *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView viewForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section 

As you can see, the second one returns a UIView instead of just string for text. Therefore you can customise your own view (with labels etc) and return it.

Here is an example of how you might do that (to be implemented in the above method):

// create the parent view that will hold header Label UIView* customView = [[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(10,0,300,60)] autorelease];  // create image object UIImage *myImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"someimage.png"];;  // create the label objects UILabel *headerLabel = [[[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease]; headerLabel.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor]; headerLabel.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:18]; headerLabel.frame = CGRectMake(70,18,200,20); headerLabel.text =  @"Some Text"; headerLabel.textColor = [UIColor redColor];  UILabel *detailLabel = [[[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease]; detailLabel.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor]; detailLabel.textColor = [UIColor darkGrayColor]; detailLabel.text = @"Some detail text"; detailLabel.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:12]; detailLabel.frame = CGRectMake(70,33,230,25);  // create the imageView with the image in it UIImageView *imageView = [[[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:myImage] autorelease]; imageView.frame = CGRectMake(10,10,50,50);  [customView addSubview:imageView]; [customView addSubview:headerLabel]; [customView addSubview:detailLabel];  return customView; 

Hope that helps