Telling a UITextField to become first responder while embedded in a UITableViewCell

It turned out that the text field was nil when I was trying to send it first responder. Sending becomeFirstResponder later in the life cycle worked.

I was having the same problem with a textfield I had added as a subview to a grouped table view cell - but figured out a solution after some poking around.

Assuming you have given the textfield a tag in your cellForRowAtIndexPath method, you can do something like this:

- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewDidAppear:animated];

    NSIndexPath *indexPath = [NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:0 inSection:0];
    UITableViewCell *cell = [self.tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath];

    myTextField = (UITextField *)[cell viewWithTag:kMyTextFieldTag];
    [myTextField becomeFirstResponder];
}

Calling it in the -(void)viewDidLoad would work.

-(void)viewDidLoad{
   [super viewDidLoad];
   // Do any additional setup after loading the view.
   [self.myTextField becomeFirstResponder] 

   //... any other code you need 
}