Question

In my application i get from a server some dates.
Some of the dates are in this format : "MMM dd, yyyy hh:mm:ss a" and some others in this : "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss Z" . I get the dates as strings from the server in one of the above formats. However i want all my dates to be in the first format. So how can i compare if the date is on the second format so i can change it? I know how to change formats , i just dont know how to compare a date with a specific format.
Thanks!

Answer 1

If you know the format that any given returned string is in then you could explicity set the format for each iteration of getting a date and then convert it to whatever format you need. Something like this example;

NSString *myString1 = @"01-30-2012"; 
NSString *myString2 = @"30-01-2012"; 

// Now convert the string to a date object 
NSDateFormatter *myDateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init]; 

[myDateFormat setDateFormat:@"dd-MM-yyyy"]; 
NSDate *date1 = [myDateFormat dateFromString:myString1]; 

[myDateFormat setDateFormat:@"MM-dd-yyyy"]; 
NSDate *date2 = [myDateFormat dateFromString:myString2]; 
[myDateFormat release];