Comparing the time of two NSDates, ignoring the date component

Question

I want to compare two NSDates with NOW ([NSDate date]).

NSDate *date1 = [NSDate dateWithString:@\"1982-02-12 07:00:00 +0100\"];
NSDate *now   = [NSDate dateW         


        

Answer 1

unsigned int flags = NSCalendarUnitHour | NSCalendarUnitMinute | NSCalendarUnitSecond;
NSCalendar* calendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];

NSDateComponents* components = [calendar components:flags fromDate:date1];

NSDate* timeOnly = [calendar dateFromComponents:components];

This will give you a date object where everything but the hours/minutes/seconds have been reset to some common value. Then you can use the standard NSDate compare functions on them.

For reference, here is the opposite question to yours: Comparing two NSDates and ignoring the time component