Question

I’m new to iPhone development and now working on my first app. I have an UIDatePicker on a view and, if the user clicks on save, the current time of the date picker should be saved in the database (in format hh:mm).

Now, the problem is that my UIDatePicker has a 24-hour-format to choose the desired hours and minutes (I configured this by setting the iPhone settings in the simulator to “Switzerland” and “German”). If I choose, for example, 17:00 in the date picker, the following code generates 5:00 in NSLog:

NSDateFormatter *datePickerFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[datePickerFormat setDateFormat:@"hh:mm"];
NSString *datePickerStringToSave = [datePickerFormat stringFromDate:datePicker.date];
NSLog(@"%@", datePickerStringToSave);

Is it possible that the date picker returns the selected time in 24-hour format? Or can I configure the NSDateFormatter to show the returned time in 24 hours? I already tried to set the “Local” setting in the attributes inspector of the date picker to my country and language, but that doesn’t work…

Thanks for your answers!

Answer 1

I think the problem here is that the lowercase h in @"hh:mm" forces datePickerFormat into 12 hour mode. Try changing that line to:

[datePickerFormat setDateFormat:@"HH:mm"]; 

For information on proper date format patterns, check out this guide.