Question

I have a NSString that I want to load into a NSDate. The string looks like: 21/10/2011 5:42:02 PM

What I have written is:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"d/M/yyyy h:mm:ss a"];
NSDate *date = [dateFormat dateFromString:dateString];

The date ends up with a null value.

There is obviously something wrong with the date formatter but I am not sure what.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

If the string doesn’t match the format, then it will return null.

For example, here’s an example that matches the format and one that doesn’t:

NSString *dateString = @"11/09/2011 12:22:02";
NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"d/M/yyyy h:mm:ss"];
NSDate *date = [dateFormat dateFromString:dateString];
NSLog(@"dateString; %@", date);

NSString *dateString2 = @"2011-11-09 12:22:02 +0000";
NSDate *date2 = [dateFormat2 dateFromString:dateString2];
NSLog(@"dateString; %@", date2);   

This outputs:

2011-11-09 07:27:54.342 Craplet[45608:707] dateString; 2011-09-11 05:22:02 +0000
2011-11-09 07:27:54.343 Craplet[45608:707] dateString; (null)