A Code Snippet For Converting NSDate To NSString With NSDateFormatter

Introduction

When working on programs that manipulate dates, sometimes those days need to be stored & printed in a particular format. iOS has given NSDate for date and time related data handling and NSDateFormatter can be used to give a date of NSDate object a visual form.

Code

Current Date and Time is obtained by init method of NSDate.

NSDate *date = [[NSDate alloc] init];

Create a NSDateFormatter for setting the date format that is needed to print and getting a NSString object from the date.

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

Use setDateFormat of NSDateFormatter to get a date format that is needed to display. This method gets the required date format by using NSString parameter and returns nothing. The method has been called on the object dateFormatter.

[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"dd-MM-YYYY HH:mm:ss"];

Method signature for setDateFormat is as follows:

(void)setDateFormat:(NSString *)string
NSString *dateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date];

Invoke stringFromDate on dateFormatter object to get the date value of NSDate object in specified date format. This method consumes previously created date object and assigns a NSString represent of the date on date object to dateString.

Method signature for stringFromDate is as follows:

(NSString *)stringFromDate:(NSDate *)date

Print the dateString using NSLog();

NSLog(@"The Date: %@", dateString);

Complete Code

NSDate *date = [[NSDate alloc] init];

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"dd-MM-YYYY HH:mm:ss"];
NSString *dateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date];

NSLog(@"The Date: %@", dateString);