Question

I have a strings – time, start, end: format “hh:mm”

for example, “21:00”.
I need compare – “time” falls between the Start and End
if End < Start, for example (“21:10” “10:00”) should be considered as: from ‘Start’ to ‘End’ the next day.

I can’t convert NSSTring like @”23:00″ to NSDate, and then I need to compare… 🙁

Thanks for advice 😉

Answer 1

You can convert a string of type HH:mm into an NSDate. If endDate is smaller than startDate, then add a day to it.

NSString *dateString = @"23:00";
NSString *startString = @"21:00";
NSString *endString = @"10:00";

NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
formatter.dateFormat = @"HH:mm";

NSDate *date = [formatter dateFromString:dateString];
NSDate *startDate = [formatter dateFromString:startString];
NSDate *endDate = [formatter dateFromString:endString];
if ([endDate compare:startDate] == NSOrderedAscending) {
    endDate = [endDate dateByAddingTimeInterval:24*3600];
}

if ([startDate compare:date] == NSOrderedAscending && [date compare:endDate] == NSOrderedAscending) {
    NSLog(@"Date %@ is in the interval [%@, %@]", dateString, startString, endString);
} else {
    NSLog(@"Date %@ is not in the interval [%@, %@]", dateString, startString, endString);
}

PS. I am assuming ARC is used here.