Converting NSString to NSDate (and back again)

Question

How would I convert an NSString like "01/02/10" (meaning 1st February 2010) into an NSDate? And how could I turn the NSDate back into a string?

Answer 1

NSString to NSDate

NSString *dateString = @"01-02-2010";
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
// this is imporant - we set our input date format to match our input string
// if format doesn't match you'll get nil from your string, so be careful
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"dd-MM-yyyy"];
NSDate *dateFromString = [[NSDate alloc] init];
// voila!
dateFromString = [dateFormatter dateFromString:dateString];
[dateFormatter release];

NSDate convert to NSString:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"dd-MM-yyyy"];
NSString *strDate = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:[NSDate date]];
NSLog(@"%@", strDate);
[dateFormatter release];

PK

Answer 2

using "10" for representing a year is not good, because it can be 1910, 1810, etc. You probably should use 4 digits for that.

If you can change the date to something like

yyyymmdd

than you can use:

// Convert string to date object
NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"yyyyMMdd"];
NSDate *date = [dateFormat dateFromString:dateStr];  

// Convert date object to desired output format
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"EEEE MMMM d, YYYY"];
dateStr = [dateFormat stringFromDate:date];  
[dateFormat release];