Is there a simple way of converting an ISO8601 timestamp to a formatted NSDate?

user_197437 0
Viewed 29343

If I use the following code:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];   
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm"];
NSDate *myDate = [dateFormatter dateFromString:@"2010-01-28T15:22:23.863"];
NSLog(@"%@", [dateFormatter stringFromDate:myDate]);

It is successfully converted to a Date object, however, I cannot seem to format it any other way than yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm, i.e. what gets logged is 2010-01-28T15:22:23

If I change the dateFormat to say [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MMMM-d'T'HH:mm"]; the Date object is null...

So my ultimate question is how to format an ISO8601 timestamp from a SQL database to use, for instance, NSDateFormatterMediumStyle to return "January 1, 2010"?

iso8601 nsdateformatter nsdate objective-c
8 Answers

You need another formatter to handle the output. Put this after your code:

NSDateFormatter *anotherDateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];   
[anotherDateFormatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterLongStyle];
[anotherDateFormatter setTimeStyle:NSDateFormatterShortStyle];
NSLog(@"%@", [anotherDateFormatter stringFromDate:myDate]);
user_846690

I should note that last time I checked Apples NSDate methods didn't support ISO8601. I still have a bug with Apple about putting official support in.

+ (id)dateWithNaturalLanguageString:(NSString *)string

will properly (last time I ran it) parse and create an NSDate object from an ISO801 string, though the documentation says you shouldn't use it, it's worked on all ISO8601 dates I've tried so far.

Colin_Wheeler_27500
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