2 replies to this topic

[sumowesley]

I have a SCTableViewController with a number of date fields on it. I would really like to have them display the dates the same way. To try out my thoughts I came up with this:

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    
    NSDateFormatter *df = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [df setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterShortStyle];

    SCDataDefinition *taskEntityDef = [self dataDefinitionWithIBName:@"EntityObjectivePeriod"];
    taskEntityDef.cellActions.willConfigure = ^(SCTableViewCell *cell, NSIndexPath *indexPath)
    {
        if([cell isKindOfClass:[SCDateCell class]]) {
            SCDateCell *dc = (SCDateCell *)cell;
            dc.dateFormatter = df;
        }
        
    };
    
}

Is this a reasonable method or is there a more elegant way to set the format of these dates? Over time, I will use a setting to format the dates but short format is fine for now.

[Tarek]

The date formatter code you wrote is really good and already shows that you're starting to have solid STV understanding already. It's very common to find that STV provides several ways to achieve the same result, so I'll list a couple more here too:

 

1. If you don't require any special runtime customization to the date formatter, then it might be easier to just set the date format string in IB. To do that, select the date property definition from IB and enter the date format in the "Date Formatter" field.

 

 

2. In addition to assigning the action to the whole data definition, you could also assign it to the individual property definition. This way you won't need to check if the cell is of type SCDateCell. For example:

 

NSDateFormatter *df = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[df setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterShortStyle];

SCDataDefinition *taskEntityDef = [self dataDefinitionWithIBName:@"EntityObjectivePeriod"];
SCPropertyDefinition *datePropertyDef = [taskEntityDef propertyDefinitionWithName:@"yourDateAttributeName"];
datePropertyDef.cellActions.willConfigure = ^(SCTableViewCell *cell, NSIndexPath *indexPath)
{
  SCDateCell *dc = (SCDateCell *)cell;
  dc.dateFormatter = df;
};

[sumowesley]

That's useful to know, thank you.