Question

I’m parsing a JSON from my server, one of the values is a date like this: 2013-01-21 18:22:35 +00000

My problem is how to transform this date to the local time like 2013-01-21 12:22:35 -0600

I need to transform the date to other format?

Thanks!

EDIT.

Using the @Gabriele Petronella solution:

NSString * yourJSONString = @"2013-01-21 18:22:35 +0000";

NSTimeZone* localTimeZone = [NSTimeZone localTimeZone];
NSString* localAbbreviation = [localTimeZone abbreviation];

NSDateFormatter * dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
NSLocale *locale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"];
[dateFormatter setLocale:locale];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd H:mm:ss Z"];
NSDate *aDate = [dateFormatter dateFromString:yourJSONString];

NSTimeZone *timezone = [NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:localAbbreviation];
[dateFormatter setTimeZone:timezone];

NSLog(@"%@", [dateFormatter stringFromDate:aDate]);

Everything works fine!

Answer 1

You use a NSDateFormatter to read the date from a NSString, then you can display the date changing the timezone using another (possibly the same) NSDateFormatter.

NSString * yourJSONString = @"2013-01-21 18:22:35 +0000";
NSDateFormatter * dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setTimeStyle:NSDateFormatterFullStyle
 ];
[dateFormatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterFullStyle];    
NSDate * aDate = [dateFormatter dateFromString:yourJSONString];

NSTimeZone * timezone = [NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:@"America/Chicago"];
[dateFormatter setTimeZone:timezone];

NSLog(@"%@", [dateFormatter stringFromDate:aDate);

Please note that the timezone is just a matter of display, whereas the NSDate object is just an abstraction to represent the date and it is independent by its displaying.