How to parse ISO 8601 date in objective-c

Question

I need to create an NSDate from json, and the date in in a format I have never used. The date string I'm getting back is 2014-02-07T03:10:43.824Z. Does anyone know the correct date format string I need to use for the date formatter?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5185230/converting-an-iso-8601-timestamp-into-an-nsdate-how-does-one-deal-with-the-utc?rq=1 — Valentin Shamardin, Feb 07 '14 at 06:31
Oh I didn't realize that the .824 was the miliseconds. You should put that in an answer so I can accept the answer. — Chandler De Angelis, Feb 07 '14 at 06:35

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 23 '18 at 08:14

16

 NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [NSDateFormatter new];
 //correcting format to include seconds and decimal place
 NSString* input = @"2014-02-07T03:10:59:434Z";
 dateFormat.dateFormat = @"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'";
 // Always use this locale when parsing fixed format date strings
 NSLocale* posix = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"];
 dateFormat.locale = posix;
 NSDate* output = [dateFormat dateFromString:input];

edited Apr 23 '18 at 08:14

AmyNguyen

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answered Feb 07 '14 at 06:40

Valentin Shamardin

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@Rob, thanks, I've made edits – Valentin Shamardin Feb 07 '14 at 07:28
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This did not work for me. The date format string that worked for me was `yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ` – Richard Shin Oct 27 '14 at 18:23
Try `'Z'` instead of `Z` – Valentin Shamardin Oct 27 '14 at 19:37
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No, 'Z' would escape the Z character, which is not what we want. The Z in the timestamp is a valid character which indicates the UTC timezone (see [the UTC section here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Time_zone_designators)). This is why [the answers on this SO post](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5185230/converting-an-iso-8601-timestamp-into-an-nsdate-how-does-one-deal-with-the-utc?lq=1) use Z, not 'Z'. – Richard Shin Oct 27 '14 at 20:14
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The answer contains an error, the 'Z' should have been Z. – Tom Vos Jun 18 '20 at 06:49

How to parse ISO 8601 date in objective-c

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