Unable to get Hijri date from the UIDatePicker in ios Objective C?

Question

I am not able to get the Hijri date format in objective cI have used a UIDatePicker on which i have added below code for showing the date as hijri.

self.datepicker.datePickerMode = UIDatePickerModeDate;
self.datepicker.calendar = [NSCalendar calendarWithIdentifier:NSCalendarIdentifierIslamic];

I am getting picker as below

But when i get the date from the UIdatePikcer i get date as 08/03/2017 but not as hijri date.

I am using below code to convert date into string.

-(NSString *)convertStringFromDate:(NSDate *)date 
{

  NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];

    [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"dd/MM/yyyy"];

  NSLog(@"date is %@",date);
  NSString *dateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date];
  return dateString;
}

Please tell me how i can solve this issue ?

Answer 1

A NSDate object is a object that holds a date but does not know how to present it will be presented to a user. See it an universal way to store dates, it does not use AM/PM, 24 hours or Gregorian calendar.

When you print/log a NSDate object it will use the systems calendar to represent the date.

To format a NSDate you use NSDateFormatter which will transform the date to something a user will understand. But you will have to tell the NSDateFormatter how to format the date.

The part you forgot is to tell NSDateFormatter to use the NSCalendarIdentifierIslamic calendar.

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] ;
dateFormatter.calendar = [NSCalendar calendarWithIdentifier:NSCalendarIdentifierIslamic];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"dd/MM/yyyy"];


NSString *dateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:[NSDate date]];
NSLog(@"date is %@",dateString);

This gave me date is 10/06/1438 for today's date ( 8 March 2017)