Question

I have a list of data that is a schedule. Each item has a time that it takes place in. I want to detect the current day and time and then display what items are available during that time. All I really know is how to get todays date and time and that I need to create a method to look in my data at what is currently “playing”. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

By assuming that your schedule items are stored in an NSArray called scheduleItems and that these items have a date property, you could filter them with a predicate:

NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"date == %@", 
                            [NSDate date]];
NSArray *todaysItems = [scheduleItems filteredArrayUsingPredicate:predicate];

The problem is that this will give you every item where its date is exactly now. You probably want to compare the date in a range:

NSDate *today = ...;
NSDate *tomorrow = ...;
NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"date BETWEEN %@",
                           [NSArray arrayWithObjects:today, tomorrow,nil]];
NSArray *todaysItems = [scheduleItems fileteredArrayUsingPredicate:predicate];

Note: this is not tested.