How to Implement Custom Table View Section Headers and Footers with Storyboard

Question

Without using a storyboard we could simply drag a UIView onto the canvas, lay it out and then set it in the tableView:viewForHeaderInSection or tableView:viewForFooterInSection delegate methods.

How do we accomplish this with a StoryBoard where we cannot drag a UIView onto the canvas

Answer 1

I know this question was for iOS 5, but for the benefit of future readers, note that effective iOS 6 we can now use dequeueReusableHeaderFooterViewWithIdentifier instead of dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier.

So in viewDidLoad, call either registerNib:forHeaderFooterViewReuseIdentifier: or registerClass:forHeaderFooterViewReuseIdentifier:. Then in viewForHeaderInSection, call tableView:dequeueReusableHeaderFooterViewWithIdentifier:. You do not use a cell prototype with this API (it's either a NIB-based view or a programmatically created view), but this is the new API for dequeued headers and footers.