How to parse a date string into an NSDate object in iOS?

Question

I am trying to parse a date string from xml into an NSDate object in an iPhone app

I am aware this must have been asked before, however, I believe I have the right syntax, but it is not working. Is there a problem with my code?

The date string I need to parse is:

2011-01-21T12:26:47-05:00 

The code I am using to parse it is:

self.dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];     [self.dateFormatter setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneForSecondsFromGMT:0]];     [self.dateFormatter setLocale:[[[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"] autorelease]];     [self.dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy'-'MM'-'dd'T'HH':'mm':'ss'Z'"];    ...   else if([elementName isEqualToString:kUpdated]){     self.currentQuestion.updated = [self.dateFormatter dateFromString:self.currentParsedCharacterData ]; } 

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks!

**Based on the link reference from theChrisKent I fixed the problem like so:

else if([elementName isEqualToString:kLastOnDeck]){      NSString *dateStr = self.currentParsedCharacterData;     // we need to strip out the single colon     dateStr = [dateStr stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@":"                                                   withString:@""                                                      options:0                                                        range:NSMakeRange([dateStr length] - 5,5)];         self.currentQuestion.lastOnDeck = [dateFormatter dateFromString:dateStr];  } 

Answer 1

You don't need near as many single quotes as you have (only needed on non date/time characters), so change this:

[self.dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy'-'MM'-'dd'T'HH':'mm':'ss'Z'"]; 

To this:

[self.dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZZZ"]; ... self.currentQuestion.updated = [self.dateFormatter dateFromString:[self.currentParsedCharacterData stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@":" withString:@"" options:0 range:NSMakeRange([self.currentParsedCharacterData length] – 5,5)]]; 

---

Documentation here: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/DataFormatting/Articles/dfDateFormatting10_4.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40002369-SW1

Unicode Format Patterns: http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-6.html#Date_Format_Patterns

Dealing with TimeZones with Colons (+00:00): http://petersteinberger.com/2010/05/nsdateformatter-and-0000-parsing/