How to display a navigation controller in a table view?

When I read your question I was interested to build a demo doing thing. I tried to use container that embed a navigation controller but unfortunately it didn't work as you can't use container in repeated contents for the normal UITableView. So I used UITableViewController to use static cells and I've managed to embed a navigation controller:

http://recordit.co/EsvsyWhcLX

The storyboard looks like this:

Method #2 incase you want to use UITableView with prototype cells:

http://recordit.co/d3yhbuJ4Ww

You can create custom cell within your cells then you instantiate the navigation controller and add its view as a subview:

and in the CustomTableViewCell.swift class do the following:

class CustomTableViewCell: UITableViewCell {

var navIsAdded = false // boolean used to make sure that nav view controller is added and will not be added again
var currentNavigationController : UINavigationController! // retain the controller so that push/pop works, if you didn't retain it like this, the view will be added but no push or pop will work


func setupNavVC(){
    if navIsAdded{
        return
    }
    let storyboard = UIStoryboard(name: "Main", bundle: nil)
    self.currentNavigationController = storyboard.instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("navVC") as! UINavigationController

    let view = self.currentNavigationController.view
    var frame = view.frame
    frame.size = self.frame.size
    view.frame = frame
    self.contentView.addSubview(view)
    navIsAdded = true
}

override func layoutSubviews() {
    setupNavVC()
}

override func setSelected(selected: Bool, animated: Bool) {
    super.setSelected(selected, animated: animated)

    // Configure the view for the selected state
}

}