Format date string with .000Z into NSDate

Question

I would like to format a date string into a NSDate object, which doesn't sound like a big thing.

The point is, that the date string contains a dot in the timezone value instead of a plus or something else. A date looks like this:

2017-06-04T16:00:00.000Z

I tried format strings like

yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.ZZZZ
yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.ZZZ
yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.Z

Of course I've also checked it on nsdateformatter.com, which works but in xCode the NSDate is always nil.

Answer 1

This work for me

var str = "2017-06-04T16:00:00.000Z"
let formato = DateFormatter()
formato.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"
formato.timeZone = NSTimeZone(name: "UTC")! as TimeZone
formato.formatterBehavior = .default
var data = formato.date(from: str)

Answer 2

In Objective-C

NSString *strValue = @"2017-06-04T16:00:00.000Z";
NSString *dateFormat = @"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"

// Or this if you like get in local time
NSString *dateFormat = @"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'"

NSDateFormatter *dateFmtr = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFmtr setDateFormat: dateFormat];

// You get a NSDate object
NSDate *dateValue = [dateFmtr dateFromString: strValue];

// Or NSString object
NSString *dateValue = [dateFmtr stringFromDate: dateValue];

Other variants for different strings formats.

// 2018-02-28T16:38:33.6873197-05:00
// If you have this string format you can use
NSString *strDate1 = @"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSSSSZ";

For more information with complex formats you can see Patterns Date Format Patterns and the Apple's official documentation Preset Date and Time Styles and Date Formatters