Is there a way of animating a UITableViewCell so that the row flashes briefly to a selected state and then back to white on selection?

Question

I just want the cell to briefly highlight either with a UIColor or a background image before animating back to the unselected state when a user taps the cell. I'm marking the cell with a star to show that it has been selected but would like the whole cell to highlight briefly just to show selection.

Answer 1

add this line in the didSelectRowAtIndexPath -

[tableView deselectRowAtIndexPath:indexPath animated:YES];

Answer 2

I think the answer provided is solid if you want to animate just one row in response to selection.

I was looking for a way to do this with multiple rows simultaneously and without selecting and deselecting the rows in response to touch. I did the following:

Created a method in my UITableViewController called "calloutCells":

- (void)calloutCells:(NSArray*)indexPaths
{   
    [UIView animateWithDuration:0.0 
                          delay:0.0 
                        options:UIViewAnimationOptionAllowUserInteraction 
                     animations:^void() {
                         for (NSIndexPath* indexPath in indexPaths)
                         {
                             [[self.tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath] setHighlighted:YES animated:YES];
                         }
                      } 
                     completion:^(BOOL finished) {
                         for (NSIndexPath* indexPath in indexPaths)
                         {
                             [[self.tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath] setHighlighted:NO animated:YES];
                         }
                      }];
}

Note that the duration and delay don't change the animation I've chosen since I'm using the built in animation on setHighlighted.

When I want to initiate the highlight/unhighlight animation from the UITableViewController, I can simultaneously highlight rows 3 and 4 of section 0 like this:

[self calloutCells:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:
                     [NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:3 inSection:0], 
                     [NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:4 inSection:0], nil]];

Hope this helps someone else!