Question

My string is something like this, 2012-12-08 17:00:00.0. Now I am trying to retrieve date from this string by using NSDate formatter. My code is

NSDateFormatter *df=[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[df setDateFormat:@"yyyy-dd-MM hh:mm:ss"]; 
NSDate *date1 = [df dateFromString:@"2012-12-08 17:00:00.0"];
NSLog(@"%@ %@",date1);
[df release];

But all I am getting is null value alone..

I have tried several types to dateFormatter like, yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm:ss, YYYY-DD-MM HH:MM:SS.. but still no use.. Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Assuming that you have just put an empty string literal in the post by mistake and your actual dates are as described in your post, you need to use HH instead of hh to parse hours in 24-hour system. You also need to add .S to your format string to parse the last zero of your time string:

NSDateFormatter *df=[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[df setDateFormat:@"yyyy-dd-MM HH:mm:ss.S"];
//                 here -------^^       ^------ and here
NSDate *date1 = [df dateFromString:@"2012-12-08 17:00:00.0"];
NSLog(@"%@",date1);

This produces the expected output (the difference in the hours is due to timezone difference):

2012-08-12 21:00:00 +0000