Parsing JSON dates on IPhone

Question

Forgive me as I'm new to Objective C.

I am getting back dates from a .NET webservice in the /Date(xxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxx)/ format. I'm looking for some direction on how to best parse this into an NSDate object. I've tried using dateWithTimeIntervalSince1970 on it but it comes back with a date in the year 1969 for a date I know is in 2006.

Looking for some direction on the proper way to handle JSON dates.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I just wrote this for iOS 4.0+ (because it uses NSRegularExpression). It handles dates with or without timezone offsets. Seems to work pretty well, what do you think?

+ (NSDate *)mfDateFromDotNetJSONString:(NSString *)string {     static NSRegularExpression *dateRegEx = nil;     static dispatch_once_t onceToken;     dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{         dateRegEx = [[NSRegularExpression alloc] initWithPattern:@"^\\/date\\((-?\\d++)(?:([+-])(\\d{2})(\\d{2}))?\\)\\/$" options:NSRegularExpressionCaseInsensitive error:nil];     });     NSTextCheckingResult *regexResult = [dateRegEx firstMatchInString:string options:0 range:NSMakeRange(0, [string length])];      if (regexResult) {         // milliseconds         NSTimeInterval seconds = [[string substringWithRange:[regexResult rangeAtIndex:1]] doubleValue] / 1000.0;         // timezone offset         if ([regexResult rangeAtIndex:2].location != NSNotFound) {             NSString *sign = [string substringWithRange:[regexResult rangeAtIndex:2]];             // hours             seconds += [[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", sign, [string substringWithRange:[regexResult rangeAtIndex:3]]] doubleValue] * 60.0 * 60.0;             // minutes             seconds += [[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", sign, [string substringWithRange:[regexResult rangeAtIndex:4]]] doubleValue] * 60.0;         }          return [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSince1970:seconds];     }     return nil; } 

Answer 2

I was in the same boat whilst using json-framework which doesn't support the date format as it's not official JSON. My source is from an API built using JSON.Net. This is what I came up with:

- (NSDate*) getDateFromJSON:(NSString *)dateString {     // Expect date in this format "/Date(1268123281843)/"     int startPos = [dateString rangeOfString:@"("].location+1;     int endPos = [dateString rangeOfString:@")"].location;     NSRange range = NSMakeRange(startPos,endPos-startPos);     unsigned long long milliseconds = [[dateString substringWithRange:range] longLongValue];     NSLog(@"%llu",milliseconds);     NSTimeInterval interval = milliseconds/1000;     return [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSince1970:interval]; } 

I don't have the appended portion in the date format that you do so I haven't dealt with that like the answer above. No error catching either, it's all new to me at this point.