Question

I’m having a bit of difficulty grouping my table view by past and upcoming. This would be determined by a date field in my Core Data model. So all items with a date > today would be upcoming, and all with a date < today would be considered past. Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use this function in your entities class:

-(NSString*)dateToStringForSectionTitels{
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
NSString *formattedDateString;
[dateFormatter locale];

NSCalendar *cal = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
NSDateComponents *components = [cal components:(NSYearCalendarUnit|NSMonthCalendarUnit|NSDayCalendarUnit) fromDate:[NSDate date]];
NSDate *today = [cal dateFromComponents:components];
components = [cal components:(NSYearCalendarUnit|NSMonthCalendarUnit|NSDayCalendarUnit) fromDate:self.startDate];
NSDate *otherDate = [cal dateFromComponents:components];

if([today isEqualToDate:otherDate]) {
    formattedDateString = @"Today";
}else{
    [dateFormatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterShortStyle];
    formattedDateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:self.startDate];
}

NSTimeInterval distanceBetweenDates = [self.startDate timeIntervalSinceDate:[NSDate date]];
double secondsInAnMinute = 60;
NSInteger minutsBetweenDates = distanceBetweenDates / secondsInAnMinute;

if (minutsBetweenDates<30) {
   formattedDateString = @"Starting Soon";
}else if(minutsBetweenDates<0){
   formattedDateString = @"In the past"; 
}


return formattedDateString;

}

It will return

1. The date in a string if the event is in the future
2. “Today” if the event is today.
3. “Starting soon” if the event is starting in 30 minutes – (You can range it to what ever you wish.
4. “In the past” if the event is in the past.

Then just pass the “dateToStringForSectionTitels” to your fetch result controller.

Good luck.