Parsing a date string gives [__NSDate length] unrecognized selector exception

Question

I have an NSDictionary that holds a date like this:

"2015-05-23 21:04:11 +0000"

and I'm trying to parse it like:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z"];

NSDate *date = [dateFormat dateFromString:[item valueForKey:@"enddata"]];

I also tried changing the last line to:

NSDate *date = [dateFormat dateFromString:[[item valueForKey:@"enddata"] stringValue]];

but my error is always the same:

[__NSDate length]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x78ec0170

I've seen posts like this, or this, or this, and many more. I've tried with different formats such as:

1. @"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z"
2. @"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss zzzz"
3. @"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss Z"
4. @"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss +zzzz"
5. @"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z"
6. @"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'"
7. @"yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss a"
8. @"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss a"
9. @"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss zzz"
10. @"yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss zzzz"

but still getting the same SIGABRT

Does anyone have a clue what's wrong?

Answer 1

I would hazard a guess that item[@"enddata"] is already an NSDate object and not an NSString object.

Verify with:

NSLog(@"enddata is type %@", NSStringFromClass([item[@"enddata"] class]));

Also don't use valueForKey:, but instead use objectForKey: or the newish access syntax I've used above.

Answer 2

This

NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormat setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z"];

NSDate *date = [dateFormat dateFromString:@"2015-05-23 21:04:11 +0000"];

NSLog(@"date: %@", [dateFormat stringFromDate:date]);

works fine for me.

NSLog is your friend. Maybe you should NSLog the value of item, or the value of

[item valueForKey:@"enddata"]

or even

[[item valueForKey:@"enddata"] stringValue]

since if the latter is an NSString in the desired format then calling dateFromString with it should work fine.