UITableView add cell Animation

You can use the following UITableView method:

- (void)insertRowsAtIndexPaths:(NSArray *)indexPaths withRowAnimation:(UITableViewRowAnimation)animation

Example with self.dataSource being a mutable array and your table only having 1 section:

[self.dataSource addObject:@"New Item"];
NSIndexPath *newIndexPath = [NSIndexPath indexPathForRow:[self.dataSource count]-1 inSection:0];
[tableView insertRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:newIndexPath] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade];

Note: Subtracted 1 from datasource count since NSIndexPath is zero indexed.


Swift

Example array that is the data source for the table view

var myArray = ["Cow", "Camel", "Sheep", "Goat"]

The following will add a row with animation at the top of the table view.

// add item to current array
myArray.insert("Horse", atIndex: 0)

// insert row in table
let indexPath = NSIndexPath(forRow: 0, inSection: 0)
tableView.insertRowsAtIndexPaths([indexPath], withRowAnimation: UITableViewRowAnimation.Fade)

Multiple updates

If you need to do multiple insertions and/or deletions then surround them with beginUpdates() and endUpdates().

tableView.beginUpdates()
tableView.insertRowsAtIndexPaths([addIndexPath1, addIndexPath2, ...], withRowAnimation: .Fade)
tableView.deleteRowsAtIndexPaths([deleteIndexPath1, deleteIndexPath2, ...], withRowAnimation: .Fade)
tableView.endUpdates()

Further reading

  • Documentation