ios - UITableView inside UIScrollView not receiving first tap after scrollling

Question

Brief

I am having an issue with a UITableView inside a UIScrollView. When I scroll the external scrollView, the table does not receive the willSelect/didSelect event on the first touch, but it does on the second one. What is even more strange, the cell itself gets the touches and the highlighted state, even when the delegate does not.

Detailed explanation

My view hierarchy:

UIView
  - UIScrollView  (outerscroll)
      - Some other views and buttons
      - UITableView (tableView)

Inside the scroll view I have some extra views that get expanded/closed dynamically. The table view needs to get "fixed" on top, together with some other elements of the view, so that is why I created this layout, that allows me to easily move elements in a similar way than Apple recommends by the use of transformations when the scroll happens.

The table View is transformed with a translation effect when the outerscroll moves like this:

- (void)scrollViewDidScroll:(UIScrollView *)scrollView {
    if (scrollView == self.outerScrollView) {

        CGFloat tableOffset = scrollView.contentOffset.y - self.fixedHeaderFrame.origin.y;
        if (tableOffset > 0) {
            self.tableView.contentOffset = CGPointMake(0, tableOffset);
            self.tableView.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeTranslation(0, tableOffset);
        }
        else {
            self.tableView.contentOffset = CGPointMake(0, 0);
            self.tableView.transform = CGAffineTransformIdentity;
        }

        // Other similar transformations are done here, but not involving the table

}

In my cell, if I implement these methods:

- (void)setSelected:(BOOL)selected {
    [super setSelected:selected];
    if (selected) {
        NSLog(@"selected");
    }
}

- (void)setHighlighted:(BOOL)highlighted animated:(BOOL)animated
{
    [super setHighlighted:highlighted animated:animated];
    if (highlighted) {
        NSLog(@"highlighted");
    }
}

- (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    [super touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event];
    NSLog(@"touchesBegan");
}

- (void)touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    [super touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
    NSLog(@"touchesEnded");
}

- (void)touchesCancelled:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    [super touchesCancelled:touches withEvent:event];
    NSLog(@"touchesCancelled");
}

Y can see this output when fails (first tap):

2014-02-10 13:04:40.940 MyOrderApp[5588:70b] highlighted 
2014-02-10 13:04:40.940 MyOrderApp[5588:70b] touchesBegan 
2014-02-10 13:04:40.978 MyOrderApp[5588:70b] touchesEnded

And this one when works (second tap):

2014-02-10 13:05:30.359 MyOrderApp[5588:70b] highlighted 
2014-02-10 13:05:30.360 MyOrderApp[5588:70b] touchesBegan 
2014-02-10 13:05:30.487 MyOrderApp[5588:70b] touchesEnded 
2014-02-10 13:05:30.498 MyOrderApp[5588:70b] expanded

No other frame change, animation or any other view interaction is done between the first and the second tap. Also, only when scrolling large amounts the bug appears, but with scrollings of just a few pixels everything keeps working as expected.

I experimented changing some properties as well, but with no luck. Some of the things I did:

• Remove userInteractionEnabled from views other than the scroll and table
• Add a call to setNeedsLayout on the table, scroll and main view when scrollViewDidScroll occurs.
• Remove the transformations from the table (still happens)

I have seen some comments about the unexpected behaviour of embedding UITableViews inside UIScrollViews but I can not see such a warn in the official documentation by Apple, so I am expecting it to work.

The app is iOS7+ only.

Questions

Has anyone experienced similar issues? Why is this and how can I solve it? I think that I could be able to intercept the tap gesture on the cell and pass it with a custom delegate or similar, but I would like the table to receive the proper events and so my UITableViewDelegate receives it as expected.

Updates

• I tried disabling cell reuse as suggested in a comment but it still happens in the same way.

Answer 1

From Apple Documentation, you shouldn't embed a UITableViewinside a UIScrollView.

Important: You should not embed UIWebView or UITableView objects in UIScrollView objects. If you do so, unexpected behavior can result because touch events for the two objects can be mixed up and wrongly handled.

Your problem is really related to what your UIScrollView does.

But if it's just to hide the tableview when needed (that was my case), you can just move the UITableView in its superview.

I wrote a small example here : https://github.com/rvirin/SoundCloud/