Show a preloaded search results?

Question

I have a non-tableview view with a searchbar in it, and while it works perfectly, the search display controller hides the table view and overlays a dark dimmed view when an empty string is in the searchbar. I want it to show a preloaded data when the empty string is in the searchbar instead of hiding the table view and overlaying the dark dimmed view underneath the searchbar. Just like how the Google search bar in Safari for iOS works.

I found a similar question asked on stackoverflow before: UISearchDisplayController - how to preload searchResultTableView, I couldn't really get it to work.

I have no problem getting the preloaded data and setting the current data to it, but I'm not sure how to prevent the displaycontroller from removing the searchResultsTableView.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I finally found a way to do this.

I found out that the searchDisplayController simply removes the searchResultsTableView from the superview, so I just added the table view back into the superview whenever the display controller tried to hide the table view:

- (void)searchDisplayController:(UISearchDisplayController *)controller didHideSearchResultsTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
    // add the tableview back in
    [self.view addSubview:self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsTableView];
}

and then I also have to show the tableview the first time the searchbar is clicked, so I did:

- (void)searchDisplayControllerWillBeginSearch:(UISearchDisplayController *)controller
{
    // after the data has been preloaded
    self.searchResults = self.allItems;
    [self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsTableView reloadData];
}

- (void)searchDisplayControllerDidBeginSearch:(UISearchDisplayController *)controller
{
    [self.view addSubview:self.searchDisplayController.searchResultsTableView];
}

For me, 'allItems' is where I stored all the searchable items and 'searchResults' is where the filtered items (after the search) is stored. And of course, you would have to preload the items (e.g. search history) before reloading the data.

I don't know if this is a nice way or not to do it in terms of the performance and what not, but it worked perfectly for me, and I hope this could be useful for other people as well. Please comment if there is a better way to do this.