Two object from one array, per UITableViewCell

djalfirevic · April 2011

Hello,

I have an NSMutableDictionary which has key as a name, and UIImage as an object. In my view controller, I have a custom cell which displays image to the left and name to the right. Basically, something like UITableViewCellStyleDefault.

When I have one image and one name per row, everything is ok. Now I want to have two images and two names, per one cell, but from that one dictionary.

How to do that?

Domele · April 2011

I would make a custom object, unless you want to make an array within a dictionary but for what you are doing, that is pretty sloppy.

matt62king · April 2011

You can make an NSArray of NSDictionary Objects, from there it is simple to use in a UITableView. It should look something like this


- (UITableViewCell)cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {

   NSDictionary *dictionary = (NSDictionary  *)[someArray objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];

  // Code to build the cell......

  someCell.someLabel.text = [dictionary objectForKey:@\"textKey\"];
  someCell.someImageView.image = [dictionary objectFroKey:@\"imageKey\"];

  return someCell;
}

djalfirevic · April 2011

This snippet is fine, but it's not what I want to do. I want something like this:


- (UITableViewCell)cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
NSDictionary *dict = (NSDictionary *)[array objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
NSDictionary *dict1 = (NSDictionary *)[array objectAtIndex:indexPath.row + 1];

// Code to build cell

  someCell.someLabel.text = [dict objectForKey:@\"textKey\"];
  someCell.someImageView.image = [dict objectFroKey:@\"imageKey\"];
  someCell.someLabel1.text = [dict1 objectForKey:@\"textKey\"];
  someCell.someImageView1.image = [dict1 objectFroKey:@\"imageKey\"];

 return someCell;
}

Do you now know what I want to do? I want to take two objects in one iteration, and store objects/keys to one cell, etc. Of course, if I have 17 object/key pairs, I want to store them in 9 rows. 8 rows would have 2 pics and 2 labels, and the last would have 1 image and 1 label, and other image/label would be empty.

Duncan C · April 2011

djalfirevic;320079 said:
This snippet is fine, but it's not what I want to do. I want something like this:
- (UITableViewCell)cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
NSDictionary *dict = (NSDictionary *)[array objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
NSDictionary *dict1 = (NSDictionary *)[array objectAtIndex:indexPath.row + 1];

// Code to build cell

  someCell.someLabel.text = [dict objectForKey:@\"textKey\"];
  someCell.someImageView.image = [dict objectFroKey:@\"imageKey\"];
  someCell.someLabel1.text = [dict1 objectForKey:@\"textKey\"];
  someCell.someImageView1.image = [dict1 objectFroKey:@\"imageKey\"];

 return someCell;
}
Do you now know what I want to do? I want to take two objects in one iteration, and store objects/keys to one cell, etc. Of course, if I have 17 object/key pairs, I want to store them in 9 rows. 8 rows would have 2 pics and 2 labels, and the last would have 1 image and 1 label, and other image/label would be empty.

The other poster has a much better idea. Save both text strings and both images in a single dictionary. Save that dictionary in an array at the indexPath.row. (Or create an array of custom data objects where the custom data object has properties for all the attributes you need for a cell in your table view.)

You COULD use two array indexes for each cell, but you're going to drive yourself crazy doing it. You would need to use code like this:

int dict1Index =indexPath.row*2;
int dict2Index =indexPath.row*2+1;

NSDictionary *dict = (NSDictionary *)[array objectAtIndex: dict1Index];
NSDictionary *dict1 = (NSDictionary *)[array objectAtIndex: dict2Index];

You would then need to make sure that you create and maintain 2 array entries for each REAL entry in your table view.

Again, I strongly advise against this approach. You're going to confuse yourself, cause problems that are hard to debug, and confuse the hell out of anybody else who tries to look at/maintain your code.

EDIT: Even worse, you will have code that is completely inflexible. If you later need to add a third text field, but not a third picture, how would you do that? What about a checkbox, slider, or segmented control? Are you going to go back and change your data structures to save THREE data elements per table view cell? What if you only want to add one more thing, not two/three? it's just a messy, ugly way to store your data. Bad design, bad idea. Don't do it.

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