从NSString获取NSDate

Question

I have current date and time in PST format as a string such as

currentDateStr 06/02/11 05:40:33 PDT

Could anyone tell me how to convert this string into NSDate.

Thanx in advance.

Answer 1

From this SO question NSDate expressed in different time zones, ie local time zone (GMT-400) to PST

 NSDate always returns relative to GMT 

This doesn't make sense. NSDate just encapsulates an absolute moment in time (let's forget about relativity for a second) and it has no concept of time zones whatsoever. To say that NSDate times are relative to GMT is wrong.

To output a date in a specific time zone, you should create an instance of NSDateFormatter and call setTimeZone: on it to set the time zone. According to the Unicode docs, the format string @"zzz" should output the time zone value as "PST".

NSTimeZone *tz = [NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:@"PST"]; // for PST

Answer 2

I guess your date formatter settings are wrong. Try with the following:

[formatter setDateFormat: @"MM/dd/yy HH:mm:ss a"];

Best of luck

Answer 3

If you are using a ISO8601 complint string for the date I recommend using the parser as made by Peter Hosey http://boredzo.org/iso8601dateformatter/

NSDate *isoDateFromString = [yourISO8601dateformatterObject dateFromString:iso8601DateString];

This will give you a NSDate without you fussing with timezone and stuff.