Question

What setDateFormat option for NSDateFormatter do I use to get a month-day’s ordinal suffix?

e.g. the snippet below currently produces:
3:11 PM Saturday August 15

What must I change to get:
3:11 PM Saturday August 15th

NSDate *date = [NSDate date];
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[dateFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSDateFormatterBehavior10_4];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"h:mm a EEEE MMMM d"];
NSString *dateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date]; 
NSLog(@"%@", dateString);

In PHP, I’d use this for the case above:
<?php echo date('h:m A l F jS') ?>

Is there an NSDateFormatter equivalent to the S option in the PHP formatting string?

Answer 1

NSDate *date = [NSDate date];
NSDateFormatter *prefixDateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[prefixDateFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSDateFormatterBehavior10_4];
[prefixDateFormatter setDateFormat:@"h:mm a EEEE MMMM d"];
NSString *prefixDateString = [prefixDateFormatter stringFromDate:date];
NSDateFormatter *monthDayFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[monthDayFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSDateFormatterBehavior10_4];
[monthDayFormatter setDateFormat:@"d"];     
int date_day = [[monthDayFormatter stringFromDate:date] intValue];  
NSString *suffix_string = @"|st|nd|rd|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|st|nd|rd|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|st";
NSArray *suffixes = [suffix_string componentsSeparatedByString: @"|"];
NSString *suffix = [suffixes objectAtIndex:date_day];   
NSString *dateString = [prefixDateString stringByAppendingString:suffix];   
NSLog(@"%@", dateString);