What is the best way to deal with the NSDateFormatter locale “feechur”?

Question

It seems that NSDateFormatter has a \"feature\" that bites you unexpectedly: If you do a simple \"fixed\" format operation such as:

NSDateForma         


        

Answer 1

May I suggest something totally different because to be honest all of this is somewhat running down a rabbit hole.

You should be using one NSDateFormatter with dateFormat set and locale forced to en_US_POSIX for receiving dates (from servers/APIs).

Then you should be using a different NSDateFormatter for the UI which you will set the timeStyle/dateStyle properties - this way you're not having an explicit dateFormat set by yourself, thus falsely assuming that format will be used.

This means UI is driven by user preferences (am/pm vs 24 hour, and date strings formatted correctly to user choice - from iOS settings), whereas dates that are "coming into" your app are always being "parsed" correctly to an NSDate for you to use.