How to read a NSDate in from a string?

Question

I have strings with dates, and want to parse these into NSDate objects. Is there a way to do that? I've looked at NSDate and NSScanner, and haven't seen anything that would read it in from a string.

Answer 1

Try NSDateFormatter

Answer 2

In the cocoa sdk, it's usually: If you want a date and have a string, look in the "Date" class for a create method that accepts a string.

[NSDateFormatter dateFromString:myString]

dateFromString:

Returns a date representation of a given string interpreted using the receiver’s current settings.

(NSDate *)dateFromString:(NSString *)string

So if you want a string and have a date, you look for an NSString Static function called stringFromDate (i'm guessing it exists but didn't look it up). I will concede that NSDateFormatter doesn't strike me as the first place i'd look for this function though.