Getting localized date range string from two NSDates

Question

I'm running into an issue when it comes to taking two NSDates and displaying a localized string for the range.

For example, say my dates are on July 7 and July 9. I would need the following localized strings:

• EN: July 7-9
• FR: 7-9 Juliet
• ES: 7-9 Julio
• DE: 7. bis. 9. Juli

Obviously using NSString stringWithFormat: isn't going to work here. For the sake of simplicity, let's not even get into the case where your range is two separate months. I know how to get a formatted string for each date but it's formatting it in a range that is getting me.

Is there way of using an NSDateFormatter to get this? The more I look around, the more I think I'm going to need to have a switch for each locale.

EDIT: To clarify, I only need the date range for the user's locale. I don't need all of them at the same time.

Answer 1

After further research it looks like in iOS 8.0+ you can use NSDateIntervalFormatter to do this. That doesn't help me now but it's comforting to know it's on the way.

Answer 2

To elaborate on Adam's answer with some sample code:

let formatter = NSDateIntervalFormatter()
formatter.dateStyle = NSDateIntervalFormatterStyle.ShortStyle
formatter.timeStyle = NSDateIntervalFormatterStyle.NoStyle
let dateRangeStr = formatter.stringFromDate(startDate, toDate: endDate)

Answer 3

If you want to drop the year information you need to explicitly set the dateTemplate argument in NSDateIntervalFormatter.

So only with this solution you will get the result July 7-9 without date.

Objective-C

NSDate *startDate = [NSDate new];
NSDate *endDate = [[NSDate new] dateByAddingTimeInterval:10000];
NSDateIntervalFormatter *df = [[NSDateIntervalFormatter alloc] init];
df.dateTemplate = @"MMMd";

NSString *detailedString = [df stringFromDate:startDate toDate:
    [trip.startDate dateByAddingNumberOfDays:endDate]];

Swift

let df = DateIntervalFormatter()
df.dateTemplate = "MMMd"
let stringDate = df.string(from: Date(), to: Date().addingTimeInterval(10000))

Documentation is straightforward:

If the range smaller than the resolution specified by the dateTemplate, a single date format will be produced. If the range is larger than the format specified by the dateTemplate, a locale-specific fallback will be used to format the items missing from the pattern.

 For example, if the range is 2010-03-04 07:56 - 2010-03-04 19:56 (12 hours)
 - The pattern jm will produce
    for en_US, "7:56 AM - 7:56 PM"
    for en_GB, "7:56 - 19:56"
 - The pattern MMMd will produce
    for en_US, "Mar 4"
    for en_GB, "4 Mar"
 If the range is 2010-03-04 07:56 - 2010-03-08 16:11 (4 days, 8 hours, 15 minutes)
 - The pattern jm will produce
    for en_US, "3/4/2010 7:56 AM - 3/8/2010 4:11 PM"
    for en_GB, "4/3/2010 7:56 - 8/3/2010 16:11"
 - The pattern MMMd will produce
    for en_US, "Mar 4-8"
    for en_GB, "4-8 Mar"