Getting the header view height of a section - objective-c

Question

I've implemented the
- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView willDisplayHeaderView:(UIView *)view forSection:(NSInteger)section
delegate method and within that I implement this piece of code
UITableViewHeaderFooterView *header = [[UITableViewHeaderFooterView alloc] initWithReuseIdentifier:#"paymentFormHeader"];
header = (UITableViewHeaderFooterView *)view;
Then I try the and assign a UIView from the header with
UIView *header = [self.tableView dequeueReusableHeaderFooterViewWithIdentifier:#"paymentFormHeader"];
and get a null value in return. This is my first time using this method so I'm probably not understanding it correctly and I noticed that it didn't ask for an indexPath. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

There are a few issues here. The first is that you're not using the right method to set up the header. The method you're using (..willDisplayHeaderView..) is there to let you know when a header you've already set up is about to be displayed so you can do any additional setup or tracking after that point.
You will want to implement 2 methods to get this working:
- (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section
and
- (UIView *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView viewForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section
Your next issue is how you are trying to dequeue the view. You either need to check for a nonexistent dequeued view and initialize one manually with that reuse identifier, or just register the appropriate class in advance. I recommend registering it in advance. So to fix this, in viewDidLoad or at some point after your UITableView has been initialized, register the class like this:
[myTableView registerClass:[UITableViewHeaderFooterView class] forHeaderFooterViewReuseIdentifier:#"paymentFormHeader"];
That will make sure you will always get a valid initialized view of that type for that reuse identifier when you try to dequeue it.