Question

In my app, I get data from Webservices. The data comes in form of a XML and I use a parser to parse and get the data I need.

In one of the result, I get the date as 14 DEC 2011. However I would like to display the date as 2011-14-12.

Here is the code I use..

NSDate *endDate = [CommonHelper getDateFromString:[NSString stringWithString:elementValue] :@"dd-MMM-yyyy HH:mm:ss"];

+ (NSDate *) getDateFromString: (NSString *) dateStr: (NSString *) format
{
    NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [dateFormat setDateFormat:format]; 
    NSDate *newDate = [dateFormat dateFromString:dateStr];
    [dateFormat release];

    return newDate;
}

Would someone be able to help me with how I can do this?

Answer 1

Use these methods for parsing the date string and formatting the date object as you described:

+ (NSDate *)parseDate:(NSString *)dateString {
    NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [dateFormat setDateFormat:@"dd MMM yyyy"]; 
    NSDate *newDate = [dateFormat dateFromString:dateString];
    [dateFormat release];

    return newDate;
}

+ (NSString *)formatDate:(NSDate *)date {
    NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [dateFormat setDateFormat:@"yyyy-dd-MM"]; 
    NSString *dateString = [dateFormat stringFromDate:date];
    [dateFormat release];

    return dateString;
}