Chapter 3

Feeding Data to Your Tables

When working with table views, it’s important to bear in mind that on their own, they are able to do very little. Just as it takes a small army of ground staff (not to mention the flight crew!) to get an airliner off the tarmac and into the skies, so tableViews need the help and support of other objects in order to function properly.

One of the main parts of building tableViews is getting the objects to play nicely together, so this chapter covers the following:

• Where the table gets its data, and how you get it there
• An initial look at how the table handles interaction
• How the table keeps track of sections and cells
• An overview of the architecture patterns that the UITableView classes exploit

Some of this chapter’s content might feel somewhat abstract and theoretical—but sticking with it is worthwhile. Developing your expertise with iOS (and tableViews especially!) often requires dealing with situations where you find yourself thinking, “Where the heck did that come from?” Figuring out what that is, and where it came from is generally a case of understanding the design patterns that iOS uses—some of which are covered in this chapter.