[cocoa] Formatting NSDate into particular styles for both year, month, day, and hour, minute, seconds

I basically need to get current date and time separately, formatted as:

2009-04-26 
11:06:54

The code below, from another question on the same topic, generates

now:        |2009-06-01 23:18:23 +0100| 
dateString: |Jun 01, 2009 23:18| 
parsed:     |2009-06-01 23:18:00 +0100|

This is almost what I'm looking for, but I want to separate the day and time.

NSDateFormatter *format = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[format setDateFormat:@"MMM dd, yyyy HH:mm"];

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

NSString *dateString = [format stringFromDate:now];

NSDateFormatter *inFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[inFormat setDateFormat:@"MMM dd, yyyy"];

NSDate *parsed = [inFormat dateFromString:dateString];

NSLog(@"\n"
"now:        |%@| \n"
"dateString: |%@| \n"
"parsed:     |%@|", now, dateString, parsed);

nothing new but still want to share my method:

+(NSString*) getDateStringFromSrcFormat:(NSString *) srcFormat destFormat:(NSString *)
destFormat scrString:(NSString *) srcString
{
    NSString *dateString = srcString;
    NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    //[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"MM-dd-yyyy"];
    [dateFormatter setDateFormat:srcFormat];
    NSDate *date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:dateString];

    // Convert date object into desired format
    //[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd"];
    [dateFormatter setDateFormat:destFormat];
    NSString *newDateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date];
    return newDateString;
}

this is what i used:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd"];

NSDateFormatter *timeFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[timeFormat setDateFormat:@"HH:mm:ss"];

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

NSString *theDate = [dateFormat stringFromDate:now];
NSString *theTime = [timeFormat stringFromDate:now];

NSLog(@"\n"
      "theDate: |%@| \n"
      "theTime: |%@| \n"
      , theDate, theTime);

[dateFormat release];
[timeFormat release];
[now release];

    NSDateFormatter *dateformat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [dateformat setDateFormat:@"Your Date Format"];

set the format to return is....

yyyy-MM-dd return 2015-12-17 date

yyyy-MMM-dd return 2015-Dec-17 date

yy-MM-dd return 15-12-17 date

dd-MM-yy return 17-12-15 date

dd-MM-yyyy return 17-12-2015 date

yyyy-MMM-dd HH:mm:ss return 2015-Dec-17 08:07:13 date and time

yyyy-MMM-dd HH:mm return 2015-Dec-17 08:07 date and time

For more Details Data and Time Format for Click Now.

Thank you.....

you can use this method just pass your date to it

-(NSString *)getDateFromString:(NSString *)string
{

    NSString * dateString = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"%@",string];

    NSDateFormatter* dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"your current date format"];
    NSDate* myDate = [dateFormatter dateFromString:dateString];

    NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [formatter setDateFormat:@"your desired format"];
    NSString *stringFromDate = [formatter stringFromDate:myDate];

    NSLog(@"%@", stringFromDate);
    return stringFromDate;
}

NSDate *date         = [NSDate date];
NSDateFormatter *df = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[df setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd"]
NSString *dateString  = [df stringFromDate:date];
[df setDateFormat:@"hh:mm:ss"];
NSString *hoursString = [df stringFromDate:date];

Thats it, you got it all you want.

Swift 3

extension Date {
    
    func toString(template: String) -> String {
        let formatter = DateFormatter()
        formatter.dateFormat = DateFormatter.dateFormat(fromTemplate: template, options: 0, locale: NSLocale.current)
        return formatter.string(from: self)
    }
    
}

Usage

let now = Date()
let nowStr0 = now.toString(template: "EEEEdMMM") // Tuesday, May 9
let nowStr1 = now.toString(template: "yyyy-MM-dd") // 2017-05-09
let nowStr2 = now.toString(template: "HH:mm:ss") // 17:47:09

Play with template to match your needs. Examples and doc here to help you build the template you need.

Note

You may want to cache your DateFormatter if you plan to use it in TableView for instance. To give an idea, looping over 1000 dates took me 0.5 sec using the above toString(template: String) function, compared to 0.05 sec using myFormatter.string(from: Date).

For swift

var dateString:String = "2014-05-20";
var dateFmt = NSDateFormatter()
// the format you want
dateFmt.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd"
var date1:NSDate = dateFmt.dateFromString(dateString)!;