UISearchController and Modifying it’s UITableView after Search

My beautiful dark table background had become styled back to a white background when working with the UISearchController and typing a word to filter. Lovely, I thought. It looks like it creates a new tableview for the filtering and isn’t smart enough to carry over styles. Why not just look at Apple’s documentation to see if I can find a way to reference the table view of filtered content with my UISearchController.

 

 

You can only really reference the search bar. And the interfaces (UISearchControllerDelegate, UISearchResultsUpdating, UISearchBarDelegate) will not help as there will never be a reference to this table supplied. So much for getting a simple table filter and background color working. Without digging for an answer at least.

A Workaround

This ‘temporary’ table EXISTS so we can get a reference to by iterating through the view structure. In the debug window this works with a simple [self.view recursiveDescription]. Here you can see the ‘root’ tableview for my UITableViewController screen.

<UITableView>
   | <UIImageView>
   | <UITableViewWrapperView>
   |    | <UITableViewCell>
   |    |    | <UITableViewCellContentView>
   |    |    | <_UITableViewCellSeparatorView>
   |    |    | <UIButton>
   |    |    |    | <UIImageView>
   |    |    | <_UITableViewCellSeparatorView>
   | <UIImageView>
   | <UIImageView>
   | <UISearchDisplayControllerContainerView>
   |    | <UIView>
   |    |    | <UISearchResultsTableView>
   |    |    |    | <UITableViewWrapperView>
   |    |    |    | <_UITableViewCellSeparatorView>
   |    |    |    | <_UITableViewCellSeparatorView>
   |    |    |    | <UIImageView>
   |    |    |    | <UIImageView>
   |    |    |    | <_UISearchBarShadowView>
   |    | <UIView>
   |    |    | <UISearchBar>
   |    |    |    | <UIView>
   |    |    |    |    | <UISearchBarBackground>
   |    |    |    |    | <UISearchBarTextField>
   |    |    |    |    |    | <_UISearchBarSearchFieldBackgroundView>
   |    |    |    |    |    | <UIFieldEditor>
   |    |    |    |    |    |    | <_UIFieldEditorContentView>
   |    |    |    |    |    |    |    | <UITextSelectionView>
   |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    | <UIView>
   |    |    |    |    |    | <UIButton>
   |    |    |    |    |    | <UIImageView>
   |    |    |    |    | <UINavigationButton>
   |    |    |    |    |    | <UIButtonLabel>
   |    | <UIView>
   |    |    | <_UISearchDisplayControllerDimmingView>

Notice how the main tableview has an embedded sub view UISearchResultsTableView. We simply need to reference that. Heres a quick and easy snippet which must be called after it exists (this table will not exist until a filter has been executed.

-(void)adjustBackgroundOnSecondaryTable:(UIView*)baseView{
    //Simple boolean to ensure this fix only gets run once.
    if(m_backgroundFixed)
        return;
    
    //Find that secondary table...
    for (UIView *subview in baseView.subviews){
        if([subview isKindOfClass:[NSClassFromString(@"UISearchResultsTableView") class]])
        {
            //HERE IS THE SECONDARY TABLE! You can work with it as UIView here or cast it to a Table!
            [subview setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
            m_backgroundFixed = YES;
        }
        else{
            //Continue search 
            [self adjustBackgroundOnSecondaryTable:subview];
        }
    }
}

To make sure the table exists before trying to modify it I executed the adjustment during a textDidChange from the search bar:

-(void)searchBar:(UISearchBar *)searchBar textDidChange:(NSString *)searchText{
    //Your filter code here
    //...

    //Ensure that background color is fixed
    [self adjustBackgroundOnSecondaryTable:self.view];
}

XCODE. Where changing a table background can sometimes take an hour of fussing!