Get current system time?

Question

Whats the best way to get the current time (HH:MM:SS) using Objective-C. I would guess I should be looking at NSDate & NSDateFormatter. I had a quick glance at the docs and it looked a little more convoluted than I expected, so I thought I would check here to make sure I was on the right track.

gary

Answer 1

NSDate * now = [NSDate date];
NSDateFormatter *outputFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[outputFormatter setDateFormat:@"HH:mm:ss"];
NSString *newDateString = [outputFormatter stringFromDate:now];
NSLog(@"newDateString %@", newDateString);
[outputFormatter release];

Answer 2

You are, in fact, on the right track. Use

NSDate *date = [NSDate date];

to get the current date and time. Use NSDateFormatter to format it. See this link for a how-to on date and time formatting.

For your situation, you could do this:

NSDate *date = [NSDate date];
NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[inputFormatter setDateFormat:@"%H:%M:%S"];
NSString *timeString = [formatter stringFromDate:date];