Quickies for NSDate

---

General

• Converting xsd:date to NSDate [permalink]
  xsd:date has a format that's a subset of the full ISO8601 format. Here's a quick way to convert an xsd:date to an NSDate. Based on a forum posting by Jens Alfke. For a full ISO 8601 parser, check out the one by Peter Hosey.

  Note that thiscode

  NSDate *xsdDateTimeToNSDate (NSString *dateTime) {
      static NSDateFormatter *xsdDateTimeFormatter;
      if (!xsdDateTimeFormatter) {
          xsdDateTimeFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];  // Keep around forever
          xsdDateTimeFormatter.timeStyle = NSDateFormatterFullStyle;
          xsdDateTimeFormatter.dateFormat = @"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:sszzz";
      }
  
      // Date formatters don't grok a single trailing Z, so make it "GMT".
      if ([dateTime hasSuffix: @"Z"]) {
          dateTime = [[dateTime substringToIndex: dateTime.length - 1]
                         stringByAppendingString: @"GMT"];
      }
  
      NSDate *date = [xsdDateTimeFormatter dateFromString: dateTime];
      if (!date) NSLog(@"could not parse date '%@'", dateTime);
  
      return (date);
  
  } // xsdDateTimeToNSDate
  

• Today's date [permalink]
  

  NSDate *today;
  today = [NSDate date];

---