In Objective-C, best way to extract substrings from NSDate?

Question

I am currently extacting yyyy mm dd hh mm and ss from NSDate like this:-

NSDate* dd   = [NSDate date];
NSString* date = [dd description];
NSString* y = [date substringToIndex:4];
NSString* m = [[date substringFromIndex:5] substringToIndex:2];
NSString* d = [[date substringFromIndex:8] substringToIndex:2];
NSString* h = [[date substringFromIndex:11] substringToIndex:2];
NSString* mi   = [[date substringFromIndex:14] substringToIndex:2];
NSString* s = [[date substringFromIndex:17] substringToIndex:2];
NSLog(@"%@, %@ %@ %@ %@ %@ %@,", date, y, m, d, h, mi, s);

But it seems dodgy to me e.g. what about locale? Is there a better way to do it, or is this locale-proof?

Answer 1

You can use NSDateFormatter, have a look at Apple documentation

Answer 2

You should give the class NSDateFormatter a shot. This class is intended to do exactly that: creating locale-proof, localized, user-prefered date strings. You shouldn't use anything els for presenting dates to users.