Parsing a RFC 822 date with NSDateFormatter

Question

I\'m using a NSDateFormatter to parse a RFC 822 date on the iPhone. However, there is no way to specify optional elements in the date format. There are a couple of optional

Answer 1

I've used the following method to parse RFC822 dates. I believe it originally was from MWFeedParser:

+ (NSDate *)dateFromRFC822String:(NSString *)dateString {

    // Create date formatter
    static NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = nil;
    if (!dateFormatter) {
        NSLocale *en_US_POSIX = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"];
        dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
        [dateFormatter setLocale:en_US_POSIX];
        [dateFormatter setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneForSecondsFromGMT:0]];
        [en_US_POSIX release];
    }

    // Process
    NSDate *date = nil;
    NSString *RFC822String = [[NSString stringWithString:dateString] uppercaseString];
    if ([RFC822String rangeOfString:@","].location != NSNotFound) {
        if (!date) { // Sun, 19 May 2002 15:21:36 GMT
            [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz"]; 
            date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:RFC822String];
        }
        if (!date) { // Sun, 19 May 2002 15:21 GMT
            [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm zzz"]; 
            date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:RFC822String];
        }
        if (!date) { // Sun, 19 May 2002 15:21:36
            [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss"]; 
            date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:RFC822String];
        }
        if (!date) { // Sun, 19 May 2002 15:21
            [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm"]; 
            date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:RFC822String];
        }
    } else {
        if (!date) { // 19 May 2002 15:21:36 GMT
            [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz"]; 
            date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:RFC822String];
        }
        if (!date) { // 19 May 2002 15:21 GMT
            [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"d MMM yyyy HH:mm zzz"]; 
            date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:RFC822String];
        }
        if (!date) { // 19 May 2002 15:21:36
            [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss"]; 
            date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:RFC822String];
        }
        if (!date) { // 19 May 2002 15:21
            [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"d MMM yyyy HH:mm"]; 
            date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:RFC822String];
        }
    }
    if (!date) NSLog(@"Could not parse RFC822 date: \"%@\" Possibly invalid format.", dateString);
    return date;

}