Ios – White space before separator line into the TableView

interface-builderiosiphoneuitableview

I have a question about UITableView…
I have a UITableViewController and I created a custom cell.
When I visualize the tableView I see a little white space before the separator line as you can see into this screenshot:

enter image description here

Why? It is a default visualize?
Can I change something to remove this white left padding?

Best Answer

The leading whitespace is provided by default in iOS 7, even for custom cells.

Checkout this property separatorInset of UITableviewCell to remove/add white spacing at either ends of cell's line separator.

// Remove white space

cell.separatorInset = UIEdgeInsetsZero;

Alternatively, at UITableView level, you can use this property -

if ([tableView respondsToSelector:@selector(setSeparatorInset:)]) {  // Safety check for below iOS 7 
    [tableView setSeparatorInset:UIEdgeInsetsZero];
}

Update - Below code works on iOS 7 and iOS 8:

-(void)viewDidLayoutSubviews
{
    if ([self.tableView respondsToSelector:@selector(setSeparatorInset:)]) {
        [self.tableView setSeparatorInset:UIEdgeInsetsZero];
    }

    if ([self.tableView respondsToSelector:@selector(setLayoutMargins:)]) {
        [self.tableView setLayoutMargins:UIEdgeInsetsZero];
    }
}

-(void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView willDisplayCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    if ([cell respondsToSelector:@selector(setSeparatorInset:)]) {
        [cell setSeparatorInset:UIEdgeInsetsZero];
    }

    if ([cell respondsToSelector:@selector(setLayoutMargins:)]) {
        [cell setLayoutMargins:UIEdgeInsetsZero];
    }
}

Related Solutions

Ios – How to set the width of a cell in a UITableView in grouped style

A better and cleaner way to achieve this is subclassing UITableViewCell and overriding its -setFrame: method like this:

- (void)setFrame:(CGRect)frame {
    frame.origin.x += inset;
    frame.size.width -= 2 * inset;
    [super setFrame:frame];
}

Why is it better? Because the other two are worse.

Adjust table view width in -viewWillAppear:

First of all, this is unreliable, the superview or parent view controller may adjust table view frame further after -viewWillAppear: is called. Of course, you can subclass and override -setFrame: for your UITableView just like what I do here for UITableViewCells. However, subclassing UITableViewCells is a much common, light, and Apple way.

Secondly, if your UITableView have backgroundView, you don't want its backgroundView be narrowed down together. Keeping backgroundView width while narrow down UITableView width is not trivial work, not to mention that expanding subviews beyond its superview is not a very elegant thing to do in the first place.
Custom cell rendering to fake a narrower width

To do this, you have to prepare special background images with horizontal margins, and you have to layout subviews of cells yourself to accommodate the margins. In comparison, if you simply adjust the width of the whole cell, autoresizing will do all the works for you.

Ios – Remove the cell highlight color of UITableView

In Swift:

cell.selectionStyle = UITableViewCell.SelectionStyle.none

or simply:

cell.selectionStyle = .none

Best Answer

Update - Below code works on iOS 7 and iOS 8:

Related Solutions

Ios – How to set the width of a cell in a UITableView in grouped style

Ios – Remove the cell highlight color of UITableView

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