NSDateFormatter fails on iOS 7, works on later versions

Question

I'm trying to parse a String in the format "ddMMyy-HH:mm:ss" using the following code

static func parseDate(var date: String?) -> NSDate?{
        if(date == nil){
            return nil
        }
        print("PARSING \(date)")
        let formatter = NSDateFormatter()
        formatter.dateFormat = "ddMMyy-HH:mm:ss"
        let res = formatter.dateFromString(date!)
        print("RESULT \(res)")
        return res
    }

The value of res is nil at the end, even though date is not nil. I then tried removing the : and - symbols using

  date = date!.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString(":", withString: "")
  date = date!.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("-", withString: "")

And then changing my format to reflect this

formatter.dateFormat = "ddMMyyHHmmss"

The console output now is

TIME IS 291015-12:10:12
PARSING Optional("291015121012")
RESULT nil

I also tried adding the line

formatter.locale = NSLocale.currentLocale()

The strange thing is, the app works perfectly on iOS 9 and I think it worked on 8 too.

I tried your code with format `ddMMyy-HH:mm:ss` and `121212-12:12:12` and the result is `"Dec 12, 2012, 12:12 PM"` which is correct — William Kinaan, Oct 29 '15 at 12:29
Set the locale to "en_US_POSIX", compare http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25657123/swift-nsdateformatter-not-working or other answers containing "en_US_POSIX locale". — Martin R, Oct 29 '15 at 12:40

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 29 '15 at 13:25

Turns out the issue was nothing to do with iOS, it was to do with the fact that my ios7 device happened to be in 12 hour mode in device settings. This confused the formatter. Using

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

as suggested by @WiliamKinaan fixed this

NSDateFormatter fails on iOS 7, works on later versions

1 Answers1