iPhone - Create custom UITableViewCell top and bottom borders

Question

I have been looking everywhere and have not quite found my answer.

I populating a UITableView with dynamic cells from JSON and I am trying to hide any extra cells. I turned off the separators in IB, and of course all the cell separators disappear. How do I add a line to the bottom and top of each tableviewcell so that only the cells that have information show a border? I have imported Quartz and have been playing with CALayer but can't find a solution.

I found a similar question here, but the only answer was not very helpful.

What would be a better, different way of doing this?

Here are my cellForRowAtIndexPath and my numberOfRowsInSection:

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{

    // Return the number of rows in the section.
    //set equal to the information in the array

    return [_jsonDataArray count];
}

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";
    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier forIndexPath:indexPath];

    //create Dictionary of data in row
    NSDictionary *jsoninfo = [_jsonDataArray objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];

    //get required keys from dictionary and assign to vairables
    NSString *title = [jsoninfo objectForKey:@"title"];
    NSString *subtitle = [jsoninfo objectForKey:@"subtitle"];
    NSURL *imageURL = [NSURL URLWithString:[jsoninfo objectForKey:@"series_image_URL"]];

    //download the images.
    NSData *imgData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:imageURL];
    UIImage *img = [[UIImage alloc] initWithData:imgData];


    //set boarder for custom cells... I need to have a border on the top and bottom of the cells I am creating so xcode does not autofill the empty space.



    //fill in text to cells
    cell.textLabel.text = title;
    cell.detailTextLabel.text = subtitle;
    cell.imageView.image = img;

    return cell;
}

Answer 1

I also think it's not the best idea, but if you really want to do this, here's code that will achieve what you want:

tableView.separatorStyle = UITableViewCellSeparatorStyleNone;

// Draw top border only on first cell
if (indexPath.row == 0) {
    UIView *topLineView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.view.bounds.size.width, 1)];
    topLineView.backgroundColor = [UIColor grayColor];
    [cell.contentView addSubview:topLineView];
}

UIView *bottomLineView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, cell.bounds.size.height, self.view.bounds.size.width, 1)];
bottomLineView.backgroundColor = [UIColor grayColor];
[cell.contentView addSubview:bottomLineView];

Put this code in the tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: method. The final look of your UITableView will be like this:

Take into account that this is not very good for performance, especially if you have a lot of cells. If you have a bigger amount of data, refer to this SO question for help on how to optimize the drawing.

Answer 2

Only try this at tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: method

[cell.contentView.layer setBorderColor:[UIColor grayColor].CGColor];
[cell.contentView.layer setBorderWidth:1.0f];