What is the range for the DATE type in Core Data?

Question

I'm putting together an application that will require the recording of dates as far back as the BC range; can Core Data's date type handle this, or do I need to define another entity to properly record and format dates?

Answer 1

Perhaps this is useful, NSDate distantPast gives you:

0001-12-31 19:43:12 -041648

and NSDate distantFuture gives you:

4000-12-31 21:00:00 -0300

Answer 2

NSDate works using NSTimeInterval which is a double.

always specified in seconds; it yields sub-millisecond precision over a range of 10,000 years.

I'm not going to work out how far back in time a double will go (order of +/- 10^300 seconds or so), but I think you will be safe to use it for the BC ranges. For example: 1,000 years is about 3x10^11 seconds.