UIRefreshControl - beginRefreshing not working when UITableViewController is inside UINavigationController

Question

It seems that if you start refreshing programmatically, you have to scroll the table view yourself, say, by changing contentoffset

[self.tableView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, -self.refreshControl.frame.size.height) animated:YES];

I would guess the reason for this is that it could be undesirable to scroll to the refresh control when user is in the middle/bottom of the table view?

Swift 2.2 version by @muhasturk

self.tableView.setContentOffset(CGPoint(x: 0, y: -refreshControl.frame.size.height), animated: true)

In a nutshell, to keep this portable add this extension

UIRefreshControl+ProgramaticallyBeginRefresh.swift

extension UIRefreshControl {
    func programaticallyBeginRefreshing(in tableView: UITableView) {
        beginRefreshing()
        let offsetPoint = CGPoint.init(x: 0, y: -frame.size.height)
        tableView.setContentOffset(offsetPoint, animated: true)        
    }
}

UITableViewController has automaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets property after iOS 7. The table view may already have contentOffset, usually (0, -64).

So the right way to show refreshControl after programmingly begin refreshing is adding refreshControl's height to existing contentOffset.

 [self.refreshControl beginRefreshing];
 [self.tableView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, self.tableView.contentOffset.y-self.refreshControl.frame.size.height) animated:YES];

Here's a Swift extension using the strategies described above.

extension UIRefreshControl {
    func beginRefreshingManually() {
        if let scrollView = superview as? UIScrollView {
            scrollView.setContentOffset(CGPoint(x: 0, y: scrollView.contentOffset.y - frame.height), animated: true)
        }
        beginRefreshing()
    }
}

None of the other answers worked for me. They would cause the spinner to show and spin, but the refresh action itself would never happen. This works:

id target = self;
SEL selector = @selector(example);
// Assuming at some point prior to triggering the refresh, you call the following line:
[self.refreshControl addTarget:target action:selector forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];

// This line makes the spinner start spinning
[self.refreshControl beginRefreshing];
// This line makes the spinner visible by pushing the table view/collection view down
[self.tableView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, -1.0f * self.refreshControl.frame.size.height) animated:YES];
// This line is what actually triggers the refresh action/selector
[self.refreshControl sendActionsForControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];

Note, this example uses a table view, but it could just as well have been a collection view.

The already mentioned approach:

[self.refreshControl beginRefreshing];
 [self.tableView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, self.tableView.contentOffset.y-self.refreshControl.frame.size.height) animated:YES];

would make the spinner visible. But it wouldn't animate. The one thing I changed is the order of these two methods and everything worked:

[self.tableView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, self.tableView.contentOffset.y-self.refreshControl.frame.size.height) animated:YES];
[self.refreshControl beginRefreshing];