Cocoa-Touch: How do I see if two NSDates are in the same day?

Question

I need to know if two NSDate instances are both from the same day.

Is there an easier/better way to do it than getting the NSDateComponents and comparing day/month/y

Answer 1

I like progrmr's solution, but I would go even further and make a category of NSDate that provides this method. It will make your code slightly more readable, and you won't need to copy and paste the method into each new class that might need it – just import the header file.

NSDate+SameDay.h

@interface NSDate (SameDay)
- (BOOL)isSameDayAsDate:(NSDate*)otherDate;
@end

NSDate+SameDay.m

#import "NSDate+SameDay.h"

@implementation NSDate (SameDay)

- (BOOL)isSameDayAsDate:(NSDate*)otherDate {

    // From progrmr's answer...
    NSCalendar* calendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];

    unsigned unitFlags = NSYearCalendarUnit | NSMonthCalendarUnit |  NSDayCalendarUnit;
    NSDateComponents* comp1 = [calendar components:unitFlags fromDate:self];
    NSDateComponents* comp2 = [calendar components:unitFlags fromDate:otherDate];

    return [comp1 day]   == [comp2 day] &&
           [comp1 month] == [comp2 month] &&
           [comp1 year]  == [comp2 year];
}

@end

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Then, after importing NSDate+SameDay.h in your class, you can use it like so:

if ([myFirstDate isSameDayAsDate:mySecondDate]) {
    // The two dates are on the same day...
}