UITableViewController initWithStyle tableView is nil afterwards?

Question

Hi,
I had a problem with the UITableViewController when initialized using the initWithStyle - Method.
I derived my own UITableViewController from the standard version:
*@interface PrefTableViewController : UITableViewController*
I've overwritten the <code>initWithStyle</code> - Method like is:
*// Override initWithStyle: if you create the controller programmatically and want to perform customization that is not appropriate for viewDidLoad.*
*if (self = [super initWithStyle: style ]) {*
* self.tabBarItem = [[ UITabBarItem alloc ] initWithTitle: @"Prefs" image: nil tag: 2 ];*
*return self;*
In the debugger the tableView property is still nil - later I load a UITableView from a NIB-File and assign it to the tableView - Property , which works but according to the Apple - Documentation which states:
"+You create a custom subclass of UITableViewController for each table view that you want to manage. When you initialize the controller in initWithStyle:, you must specify the style of the table view (plain or grouped) that the controller is to manage. Because the initially created table view is without table dimensions (that is, number of sections and number of rows per section) or content, the table view’s data source and delegate—that is, the UITableViewController object itself—must provide the table dimensions, the cell content, and any desired configurations (as usual). You may override loadView or any other superclass method, but if you do be sure to invoke the superclass implementation of the method, usually as the first method call."+
The tableView - Property should be assigned to a valid UITableView - Instance created by the Framework. Did I missunderstand the documentation or is this a bug ?
I'm using iPhone SDK 3.0.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Frank

Answer 1

Hi Frank -
I don't think you did anything contrary to the doc you quoted. I'll need to know some more about your nib(s) and maybe the code in your app delegate to find out what's happening.
You said the table view was loaded from a nib. Was the PrefTableViewController also loaded from that same nib? When you use a subclass of UITableViewController, a table view is created and connected to the controller's tableView ivar when the controller is created. Therefore you would normally either load both the controller and its view from a nib or create both in your code. There would seldom be a good reason to load the table view from a nib while creating the controller in code. So that's the first bit of confusion we need to clarify.
// Override initWithStyle: if you create the controller programmatically and want
// to perform customization that is not appropriate for viewDidLoad.
initWithStyle is only called if you create the controller in code. So it won't run if you loaded the controller from a nib. I think we need to find out how that controller was created, or if in fact, it was never created.
To sort this out, it would help to see the code that either creates or loads your controller, in addition to any code that loads the table view separately. For a small app with one table view, it's likely you would either create or load the controller in applicationDidFinishLaunching, so that may be the only method we need to look at. However if the controller is defined in MainWindow.xib, then it would load automatically at startup, so we'd need to look carefully at that xib. Let us know which Xcode template you used to start the project, how many xib files you have, and a description of the xib(s) that you either modified or added to the template.
- Ray