How to get all cells in a UITableView

Question

Let's say I have a UITableView which has multiple rows. I want to get all the UITableViewCells as an NSArray at a certain point of time. I have tried

[tableView visibleCells]  

but there is a problem with this approach: I can not have all those cells which are not currently in the current screen. So I turned to another approach:

-(NSArray *)cellsForTableView:(UITableView *)tableView {     NSInteger sections = tableView.numberOfSections;     NSMutableArray *cells = [[NSMutableArray alloc]  init];     for (int section = 0; section < sections; section++) {         NSInteger rows =  [tableView numberOfRowsInSection:section];         for (int row = 0; row < rows; row++) {             NSIndexPath *indexPath = [NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:row inSection:section];             UITableViewCell *cell = [self.tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];   // **here, for those cells not in current screen, cell is nil**             [cells addObject:cell];         }     }     return cells; } 

but seems that this approach still can not get those cells which are not displayed in the screen. Can anyone help me on this?

Answer 1

I don't think thats possible, simply because the tableView doesn't store all cells. It uses a caching mechanism which only stores some cells, that are not visible, for reuse.

Why do you need all cells? Maybe you can achieve, what you're trying to do, otherwise.