Uploaded November 2012 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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The UITableViewDataSource protocol is usually implemented by an ViewController class that mediates the application'™s data model for a UITableView object. The data source provides the table view object with the information it needs to construct and modify a table view.

As a representative of the data model, the data source supplies minimal information about the table view's appearance. The table-view object's delegate—an object adopting the UITableViewDelegate protocol—provides that information.

In the last video we've discussed about the required methods of the UITableViewDelegate protocol. There are also a couple of optional methods. For example in case of Grouped-Style table-views, we have sections, and each section may have a header and a footer.

To specify how many sections a table view should have, we implement the following method:

- (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView
{
return 2; // 2 should be replaced with the number of sections we need
}

To specify the title of each section in a table view, we implement the following method:

- (NSString *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView
titleForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
NSString *titleOfSection;

switch (section) {
case 0:
titleOfSection = @"First Section";
break;

case 1:
titleOfSection = @"Second Section";

// ... and so on, depending how many sections we must have

default:
titleOfSection = @"No Title";
break;
}

return titleOfSection;
}

For more, please visit Apple's online documentation at:

developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/reference/UITableViewDataSource_Protocol/Reference/Reference.html