UITableView Visible Cells Not Laying Out Subviews When View Appears

Question

I have a UITableView that has multiple sections, with custom UITableViewCell subclasses populating the table. Within these UITableViewCell subclasses, I am implementing layoutSubviews to customize the position of labels, etc.

All of the cell's subviews are adjusting as they should, except the first batch of visible cells upon the view loading. They are identical to how they are laid out in storyboard, which is not what I want. For example:

http://i.stack.imgur.com/L5GJh.png

Note: The green and orange borders are a visual aid to see if the labels are resizing.

Upon scrolling, all of the new cells that appear have their subviews the way that I programmed them to be in layoutSubviews. As far as the first batch of visible cells, I can scroll them offscreen and then back on, and then the subviews are laid out perfectly. For example:

http://i.stack.imgur.com/jgjch.png

Within tableView: cellForRowAtIndexPath:, I call [cell layoutIfNeeded] before the method returns the cell. If I change this to [cell layoutSubviews], then the inverse happens, where the first batch of visible cells are laid out as they should be, but all of the cells that get loaded upon scrolling are not laid out properly.

I have tried to put [cell layoutIfNeeded] within [tableview: willDisplayCell: with no luck. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

This is the behavior you'd see if you were setting frames in your layout code with Auto Layout enabled. This won't work. The Auto Layout system is responsible for setting frames and will overwrite the values you set.

You should either specify your layout using constraints or turn off Auto Layout.