When to subclass UITableView?

Question

I have a MainViewController, and I want to add two UITableView's to it, each with different cells. But I don't want to clog up my MainViewController code by checking in the table delegate methods which table it is, and then acting on it. It gets too messy.

So I thought I would subclass UITableView and let it handle the cellForRow and other table methods by itself, and this way when I want to add a table to MainViewController, all I'd have to is

CustomTable *customTable = [[CustomTable alloc] init];
[self.view addSubview:customTable];

and all the delegate methods would be handled in that class, leaving my MainViewController clutter free.

Am I approaching this wrong? Should I be subclassing UITableViewController instead? What's the difference?

Answer 1

When to subclasss UITableView? Not now.

Create two classes, which are member variables of your view controller. Point the table view delegates at each of your two new classes.

In Cocoa you tend to combine classes rather than inherit from them as you usually do in Java and C#.