Question

I have a string “2012-09-16 23:59:59 JST”
I want to convert this date string into NSDate.

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss Z"];
NSDate *capturedStartDate = [dateFormatter dateFromString: @"2012-09-16 23:59:59 JST"];
NSLog(@"%@", capturedStartDate);

But it is not working. Its giving null value. Please help..

Answer 1

When using 24 hour time, the hours specifier needs to be a capital H like this:

[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss Z"];

Check here for the correct specifiers : http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-6.html#Date_Format_Patterns

However, you need to set the locale for the date formatter:

// Set the locale as needed in the formatter (this example uses Japanese)
[dateFormat setLocale:[[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"ja_JP"]];

Full working code:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss zzz"];
[dateFormatter setLocale:[[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"ja_JP"]];
NSDate *capturedStartDate = [dateFormatter dateFromString: @"2012-09-16 23:59:59 JST"];
NSLog(@"Captured Date %@", [capturedStartDate description]);

Outputs (In GMT):

Captured Date 2012-09-16 14:59:59 +0000