Having a UITextField in a UITableViewCell

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I'm trying to do that for a couple of days now, and after reading tons of messages of people trying to do that too, I'm still unable to have a fully working UITextField in some of my UITableViewCells, just like in this example:

Screenshot

Either I have the form working but the text is not visible (although I set its color to blue), the keyboard goes on the field when I click on it and I haven't been able to correctly implement the keyboard events. I tried with a bunch of examples from Apple (mainly UICatalog, where there is a kinda similar control) but it's still not working correctly.

Can somebody help me (and all the people trying to realize this control) and post a simple implementation of a UITextField in a UITableViewCell, that works fine?

12 Answers

Try this out. Works like a charm for me (on iPhone devices). I used this code for a login screen once. I configured the table view to have two sections. You can of course get rid of the section conditionals.

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

UITableViewCell *cell = [self.tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:kCellIdentifier];
if (cell == nil) {
    cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault 
                                   reuseIdentifier:kCellIdentifier] autorelease];
    cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;

    if ([indexPath section] == 0) {
        UITextField *playerTextField = [[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(110, 10, 185, 30)];
        playerTextField.adjustsFontSizeToFitWidth = YES;
        playerTextField.textColor = [UIColor blackColor];
        if ([indexPath row] == 0) {
            playerTextField.placeholder = @"example@gmail.com";
            playerTextField.keyboardType = UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress;
            playerTextField.returnKeyType = UIReturnKeyNext;
        }
        else {
            playerTextField.placeholder = @"Required";
            playerTextField.keyboardType = UIKeyboardTypeDefault;
            playerTextField.returnKeyType = UIReturnKeyDone;
            playerTextField.secureTextEntry = YES;
        }       
        playerTextField.backgroundColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
        playerTextField.autocorrectionType = UITextAutocorrectionTypeNo; // no auto correction support
        playerTextField.autocapitalizationType = UITextAutocapitalizationTypeNone; // no auto capitalization support
        playerTextField.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentLeft;
        playerTextField.tag = 0;
        //playerTextField.delegate = self;

        playerTextField.clearButtonMode = UITextFieldViewModeNever; // no clear 'x' button to the right
        [playerTextField setEnabled: YES];

        [cell.contentView addSubview:playerTextField];

        [playerTextField release];
    }
}
if ([indexPath section] == 0) { // Email & Password Section
    if ([indexPath row] == 0) { // Email
        cell.textLabel.text = @"Email";
    }
    else {
        cell.textLabel.text = @"Password";
    }
}
else { // Login button section
    cell.textLabel.text = @"Log in";
}
return cell;    
}

Result looks like this:

login form

Here is how I have achieved this:

TextFormCell.h

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

#define CellTextFieldWidth 90.0
#define MarginBetweenControls 20.0

@interface TextFormCell : UITableViewCell {
 UITextField *textField;
}

@property (nonatomic, retain) UITextField *textField;

@end

TextFormCell.m

#import "TextFormCell.h"

@implementation TextFormCell

@synthesize textField;

- (id)initWithReuseIdentifier:(NSString *)reuseIdentifier {
    if (self = [super initWithReuseIdentifier:reuseIdentifier]) {
  // Adding the text field
  textField = [[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero];
  textField.clearsOnBeginEditing = NO;
  textField.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentRight;
  textField.returnKeyType = UIReturnKeyDone;
  [self.contentView addSubview:textField];
    }
    return self;
}

- (void)dealloc {
 [textField release];
    [super dealloc];
}

#pragma mark -
#pragma mark Laying out subviews

- (void)layoutSubviews {
 CGRect rect = CGRectMake(self.contentView.bounds.size.width - 5.0, 
        12.0, 
        -CellTextFieldWidth, 
        25.0);
 [textField setFrame:rect];
 CGRect rect2 = CGRectMake(MarginBetweenControls,
       12.0,
         self.contentView.bounds.size.width - CellTextFieldWidth - MarginBetweenControls,
         25.0);
 UILabel *theTextLabel = (UILabel *)[self textLabel];
 [theTextLabel setFrame:rect2];
}

It may seems a bit verbose, but it works!

Don't forget to set the delegate!

This should not be difficult. When creating a cell for your table, add a UITextField object to the cell's content view

UITextField *txtField = [[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame....]
...
[cell.contentView addSubview:txtField]

Set the delegate of the UITextField as self (ie your viewcontroller) Give a tag to the text field so you can identify which textfield was edited in your delegate methods. The keyboard should pop up when the user taps the text field. I got it working like this. Hope it helps.

I ran into the same problem. It seems that setting the cell.textlabel.text property brings the UILabel to the front of the contentView of the cell. Add the textView after setting textLabel.text, or (if that's not possible) call this:

[cell.contentView bringSubviewToFront:textField]
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