How to convert String to NSDate?

Question

I have string that I received whenever there is new remote notifications.I\'m using parse for my Backend. And String that I retrieved come from \"createdAt\" column.

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Answer 1

You are missing the milliseconds. Thus:

dateFormater.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"

Note, when converting from the date string to a NSDate, you shouldn't quote the Z. If you quote the Z, it will match the literal Z character, but won't correctly reflect that this date string is actually Zulu/GMT/UTC.

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If you want to create formatter that also goes the other way, converting NSDate objects to strings, in that case you should quote the Z, but in that case you must remember to explicitly set the timezone:

dateFormater.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'"
dateFormater.timeZone = NSTimeZone(forSecondsFromGMT: 0)

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By the way, don't forget to set the locale as per Apple Technical Q&A 1480.

dateFormater.locale = NSLocale(localeIdentifier: "en_US_POSIX")