How do I NSLog an NSDate?

Question

With the code pasted below, I am trying to log an NSDate. What am I doing wrong here?

NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[formatter setDateFormat:@"YYYY-MM-dd"];
NSDate *todaysDate;
todaysDate = [NSDate date];
NSLog(@"Todays date is %@",formatter);

Answer 1

All you have to do is:

  NSLog(@"Todays date is %@",[formatter stringFromDate:todaysDate]);

Answer 2

What you are doing wrong is you haven't done anything to associate the date with the formatter. So, you would want to do something like this:

NSLog(@"Todays date is %@", [formatter stringFromDate:todaysDate];

The NSDate doesn't know anything about formatting (just date information), and the NSDateFormatter doesnt really know anything about dates, just how to format them. So you have to use methods like -stringFromDate: to actually format the date for pretty human-readable display.

If what you need is to just see the date information and don't need a particular format, you don't need a formatter to log a date:

NSLog(@"Todays date is %@", todaysDate);

Will work fine to give you the -description of the NSDate object. I wouldn't use this for anything you display to the user (do use an NSDateFormatter for that), but this is handy if you're just debugging and need to see information about an NSDate object.