UITableView - Design for comments and replies

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on having an application to display comments with respective replies.

I can show all the comments easily in a table view having a simple array of comment objects. In case, one of the comment has any replies (in the database stored), I need to load those replies - which are represented as a different objects at the moment - and display them under the correct comment.

For the table view, this means, new rows are going to be inserted.

I tried to code this but somehow, this ends up in an endless loop. Maybe you guys can give me a hint?


This is my function to load the comments first

Code Block 

Code Block 
func fetchCommentsByParticipationId() {
    dataAccessService.fetchCommentsByParticipationId(completionHandler: { (commentArray) in
      self.commentArray = commentArray
      self.commentTableView.reloadData()
    }, participationId: participationObject.id)
  }

I have two arrays as data sources. One contains the comments and the other ones contains the comment replies

Code Block 
 func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
    return commentArray.count + commentReplyArray.count 
  }

Code Block 
func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
    let commentsTableViewCell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "CommentsTableViewCell") as! CommentsTableViewCell
    commentsTableViewCell.backgroundColor = DARK_BLUE_COLOR
     
    let cellHeight = commentsTableViewCell.frame.height
    let cellWidth = commentsTableViewCell.frame.width
     
    let commentObject = commentArray[indexPath.row] // Comment(json: (hitsTableController.hitsSource?.hit(atIndex: indexPath.row))!)
     
    commentsTableViewCell.initSenderLabel(cellWidth: cellWidth, cellHeight: cellHeight)
    commentsTableViewCell.initReplyButton(cellWidth: cellWidth, cellHeight: cellHeight)
    dataAccessService.fetchUserById(completionHandler: { (userObject) in
      commentsTableViewCell.senderLabel.text = userObject.firstName + " " + userObject.lastName
    }, uid: commentObject.userId)
     
    commentsTableViewCell.initCommentLabel(cellWidth: cellWidth, cellHeight: cellHeight)
    commentsTableViewCell.commentTextView.text = commentObject.comment
     
    commentsTableViewCell.replyButtonAction = { [unowned self] in
      self.commentReplyObject.commentId = commentObject.id
      self.commentReplyObject.userId = commentObject.userId
      var replyToUserName = commentsTableViewCell.senderLabel.text!
      replyToUserName = replyToUserName.replacingOccurrences(of: " ", with: "")
       
      self.replyToUser(replyToUserName: replyToUserName)
    }
     
    // fetch replies to comments
    dataAccessService.fetchRepliesByCommentId(completionHandler: { (_commentReplyArray) in
      for commentReply in _commentReplyArray {
        self.commentReplyArray.append(commentReply)
        self.commentTableView.insertRows(at: [
          (NSIndexPath(row: self.commentArray.count-1, section: 0) as IndexPath)], with: .bottom)
        commentsTableViewCell.initReplyViews(cellWidth: cellWidth, cellHeight: cellHeight)
         
        commentsTableViewCell.senderLabel.text = "Test"
        commentsTableViewCell.commentTextView.text = commentReply.comment
      }
    }, commentId: commentObject.id)
    return commentsTableViewCell
  }

```

What would be the best idea to achieve what I want to do?