Get day of week using NSDate

Question

I created a method that is supposed to take in a string in "YYYY-MM-DD" form and spit out an int that represents the dates position in relation to the week it is in (regardless if it overlaps between months). So e.g sunday=1 monday=2 and so on.

Here is my code:

    func getDayOfWeek(today:String)->Int{

    var formatter:NSDateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
    formatter.dateFormat = "YYYY-MM-DD"
    var todayDate:NSDate = formatter.dateFromString(today)!
    var myCalendar:NSCalendar = NSCalendar(calendarIdentifier: NSGregorianCalendar)
    var myComponents = myCalendar.components(NSCalendarUnit.WeekdayOrdinalCalendarUnit, fromDate: todayDate)
    var weekDay = myComponents.weekdayOrdinal
    return weekDay
}

I know that NSCalendarUnit.WeekdayOrdinalCalendar is wrong but I have tried I think most logical combinations. And have also messed around with myComponents.weekdayOrdinal e.g used mycomponents.day or .weekday.

Here are my options in what to use:

static var EraCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var YearCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var MonthCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var DayCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var HourCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var MinuteCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var SecondCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekdayCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekdayOrdinalCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var QuarterCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekOfMonthCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekOfYearCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var YearForWeekOfYearCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var CalendarCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var TimeZoneCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }

It is not clear to me since there is no DayOfWeekUnit option (or something similar).

Answer 1

Swift 3 & 4

Retrieving the day of the week's number is dramatically simplified in Swift 3 because DateComponents is no longer optional. Here it is as an extension:

extension Date {
    func dayNumberOfWeek() -> Int? {
        return Calendar.current.dateComponents([.weekday], from: self).weekday 
    }
}

// returns an integer from 1 - 7, with 1 being Sunday and 7 being Saturday
print(Date().dayNumberOfWeek()!) // 4

If you were looking for the written, localized version of the day of week:

extension Date {
    func dayOfWeek() -> String? {
        let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
        dateFormatter.dateFormat = "EEEE"
        return dateFormatter.string(from: self).capitalized 
        // or use capitalized(with: locale) if you want
    }
}

print(Date().dayOfWeek()!) // Wednesday

Answer 2

What you are looking for (if I understand the question correctly) is NSCalendarUnit.CalendarUnitWeekday. The corresponding property of NSDateComponents is weekday.

Note also that your date format is wrong (the full specification can be found here: http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-6.html).

The function can be simplified slightly, using automatic type inference, also you use variables a lot where constants are sufficient. In addition, the function should return an optional which is nil for an invalid input string.

Updated code for Swift 3 and later:

func getDayOfWeek(_ today:String) -> Int? {
    let formatter  = DateFormatter()
    formatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd"
    guard let todayDate = formatter.date(from: today) else { return nil }
    let myCalendar = Calendar(identifier: .gregorian)
    let weekDay = myCalendar.component(.weekday, from: todayDate)
    return weekDay
}

Example:

if let weekday = getDayOfWeek("2014-08-27") {
    print(weekday)
} else {
    print("bad input")
}

Original answer for Swift 2:

func getDayOfWeek(today:String)->Int? {

    let formatter  = NSDateFormatter()
    formatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd"
    if let todayDate = formatter.dateFromString(today) {
        let myCalendar = NSCalendar(calendarIdentifier: NSCalendarIdentifierGregorian)!
        let myComponents = myCalendar.components(.Weekday, fromDate: todayDate)
        let weekDay = myComponents.weekday
        return weekDay
    } else {
        return nil
    }
}

Answer 3

If you want the full "Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday" etc.

EDIT: There's actually a built in format that returns localized day names:

extension NSDate {
    func dayOfTheWeek() -> String? {        
        let dateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
        dateFormatter.dateFormat = "EEEE"
        return dateFormatter.stringFromDate(self)
    }
}

My previous solution (for English only):

extension NSDate {

    func dayOfTheWeek() -> String? {
        let weekdays = [
            "Sunday",
            "Monday",
            "Tuesday",
            "Wednesday",
            "Thursday",
            "Friday",
            "Saturday"
        ]

        let calendar: NSCalendar = NSCalendar.currentCalendar()
        let components: NSDateComponents = calendar.components(.Weekday, fromDate: self)
        return weekdays[components.weekday - 1]
    }
}

You don't need to unwrap calendar and components, they are guaranteed by the foundation framework.

Usage:

print(myDate.dayOfTheWeek())