UITableView with different optional sections?

Question

I am looking for a \"good\" way to solve some special requirements:

I have an UITableView with different sections, for example:

• Base Data
• About m

Answer 1

This looks like my way of approaching such problems. I'm using enums (Obj-C & especially Swift) to handle and identify my Sections and I always return the full amount of potential sections:

override func numberOfSectionsInTableView(tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
    return FormSection.count // enum function
}

In func tableView(tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int, however, I switch the unused sections off by returning 0 rows.

The benefit I saw after struggling with your type of dynamic tables was that all sections are always at the same index which made cell management relatively easy:

override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
    let section:FormSection = FormSection(rawValue:indexPath.section)!

    switch section {
    case .Header:
        //…
    default:
        //…
    }
}

The same goes for section headers/footers:

override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, viewForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> UIView? {
    switch section {
    case FormSection.Header.rawValue:
        return nil
    case FormSection.RoomSetup.rawValue where foo == false:
        return nil
    default:
        // return header with title = FormSection(rawValue: section)?.headerTitle()
        // Swift enums ftw ;)
    }

And the number of rows is calculated/fetched at runtime:

override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
    let section:FormSection = FormSection(rawValue:section)!
    switch section {
    case .Section1:
        return fooExpanded ? (numberOfFoo) : 0
    case .Section2:
        return model.barCount()
    default:
        return 1
    }
}