UITableView delete and reload cells - objective-c

Question

I am delete some rows in UITableView like this:
[tableView deleteRowsAtIndexPaths:toDelete withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationAutomatic];
This adds a nice animation to the delete operation.
However, after deleting I need to update all the currently visible rows. Calling
[tableView reloadData];
right after the first call works, but the nice animation effect is gone. What's a better way to do this? i.e., to animate the delete operation, and update all the currently visible rows?
Thanks!
The reason why I need to do this is because each cell contains a 'checkbox'. My view controller is checkbox's delegate and each checkbox has an NSIndexPath associated with it. When the checkbox is toggled, delegate is called telling it hey we toggled for x index path. Now, if some rows are deleted, the index paths need to be update. That's why I need to reload everything so each checkbox knows where it belongs.

Answer 1

In your deletion action use the performBatchUpdates instead of [tableView beginUpdates] this allows you to have a completion block
Animates multiple insert, delete, reload, and move operations as a
group.
self.tableView.performBatchUpdates({
//do stuff then delete the row
self.tableView.deleteRows(at: [indexPath], with: .fade)
}, completion: { (done) in
//perform table refresh
self.tableView.reloadData()
})

Answer 2

ctrahey's animation block doesn't work for me no matter what duration is passed. I have researched the mechanism of UITableView's delete, insert & reload. I am maintaining my project in Github countering this problem.
https://github.com/VansonLeung/VanTableController
It includes a working unit test in it. Normally in order to animate UITableView's cell animation, we have to do something like this:
[tableView_ beginUpdates];
[tableView_ deleteRowsAtIndexPaths: indexPathDelete withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationAutomatic];
[tableView_ insertRowsAtIndexPaths: indexPathInsert withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationAutomatic];
[tableView_ reloadRowsAtIndexPaths: indexPathReload withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationAutomatic];
[tableView_ endUpdates];
We have to determine the delete rows, insert rows & reload rows' indexPath arrays and it's a very nasty work! My project work is basically a wrapper for generating these indexPaths.

Answer 3

Note: As noted in comments, it is likely that this answer will not work. If it were not accepted, I would delete it.
I'm not 100% sure that this is the best way to do this, but there is something pleasantly clean about it. We can wrap reloadData in a regular UIView animation block after modifying the underlying model:
// if self.people is a mutable array
[self.people removeObjectAtIndex:13];
[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5 animations:^{
[self.tableView reloadData];
}];

Answer 4

I had some problems related to it. Using fixed index probably you will face a lot of headache. I've solved this adding to the UITableViewCell a reference to a Item from my datasource, not a NSIndexPath. So, there is no need to use indexPath saved into your cell.
Also, there is some information on Apple's Website saying we mustn't use the method reloadData inside insert or delete methods.
Apple docs
all this method to reload all the data that is used to construct the table, including cells, section headers and footers, index arrays, and so on. For efficiency, the table view redisplays only those rows that are visible. It adjusts offsets if the table shrinks as a result of the reload. The table view's delegate or data source calls this method when it wants the table view to completely reload its data. It should not be called in the methods that insert or delete rows, especially within an animation block implemented with calls to beginUpdates and endUpdates