Changing UITableView's section header/footer title without reloading the whole table view

If you just have a basic text header or footer, you can access them directly:

[tableView footerViewForSection:indexPath.section].textLabel.text = [self tableView:tableView titleForFooterInSection:indexPath.section];

similarly for the header:

[tableView headerViewForSection:indexPath.section].textLabel.text = [self tableView:tableView titleForHeaderInSection:indexPath.section];

This should work:

    UIView.setAnimationsEnabled(false)
    tableView.beginUpdates()

    if let containerView = tableView.footerViewForSection(0) {
        containerView.textLabel!.text = "New footer text!"

        containerView.sizeToFit()
    }

    tableView.endUpdates()
    UIView.setAnimationsEnabled(true)

I managed to do it in an indirect way: I created a UILabel and set it as section header/footer.

- (UIView *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView viewForFooterInSection:(NSInteger)section {
    // update sectionFooterView.text    
    return sectionFooterView;
}

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    // create sectionFooterView in Interface Builder, change the frame here
    // use Font-size:15 , BG-Color: clearColor , text-Color: RGB=(97,105,118) 
    // and Text-alignment:Center to look like table view's original footer
    sectionFooterView.frame = CGRectMake(0, 10, 320, 12);
}

Does anyone know a way to do this without setting a custom footer view?