Question

NSDateFormatter is returning nil when I try to parse the string @”02291120″ with the formatter string

@"MMddHHmm"

However, Feb 29 is a valid date (for a leap year). How do I make sure the result returned by the parser is not nil?

Answer 1

You didn’t tell the date formatter what year to use.

If you don’t include the year in your date format, then it uses 1970 by default. If you want it to use a different year by default, you have to give the date formatter a default date. For example, if you want it to use the current year, you can just set the default date to the current date:

NSDateFormatter *df = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
df.dateFormat = @"MMddHHmm";
df.defaultDate = [NSDate date];
NSDate *date = [df dateFromString:@"02291120"];