Constructing an NSDate from today's date and a string with the time

Question

If I have a string representing a time, say \"10:45 am\", and do the following to parse the string:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormat;
dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatt         


        

Answer 1

This will create a date for the beginning of the day in the current time zone.

NSDate *today = [NSDate date];
NSTimeInterval interval;
NSCalendar *cal = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
[cal rangeOfUnit:NSDayCalendarUnit
       startDate:&today
        interval:&interval
         forDate:today];

Now we add the time:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
// I have to set the locale to posix_en_us, as my system is using 24hour style as default
dateFormatter.locale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"hh:mm a"];
NSDate *time = [dateFormatter dateFromString:@"10:45 AM"];
NSDateComponents *comps = [cal components:(NSHourCalendarUnit | NSMinuteCalendarUnit)
                                 fromDate:time];
NSDate *dateAndTime = [cal dateByAddingComponents:comps
                                           toDate:today
                                          options:0];

dateAndTime will now be todays date with 10:45 am in the local timezone.

controlling in the debugger:

po dateAndTime
$0 = 0x41b7df138c00000d 2013-09-10 08:45:00 +0000

This is correct, as my timezone is 2 hours ahead to GMT, as we still have summer time.