Swift 2: Parse RSS pubDate to NSDate object

Question

I´m trying to convert a String (Date) from an RSS Feed ("pubDate") to an NSDate object in Swift 2.

let dateString:String = "Tue, 16 Aug 2016 15:27:33 +0000"

let dateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
dateFormatter.dateStyle = NSDateFormatterStyle.ShortStyle
dateFormatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd"

let date = dateFormatter.dateFromString(dateString)
print(date)

The problem is, that in that case the date object is always nil. The problem is the format of the input string. If I change dateString to "2016-08-16" then the NSDate object is built correctly.

So I´ve no idea how to get this NSDate working. String operations on the dateString before? Or some options on the dateFormatter?

Thanks for you help in advance!

Your date format matches `2016-08-16`. You need the proper date format — vadian, Aug 20 '16 at 07:33
Possible duplicate of [Converting NSString to NSDate (and back again)](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3917250/converting-nsstring-to-nsdate-and-back-again) — vadian, Aug 20 '16 at 07:36
Adapt your dateFormat to your dateString by following this: http://i.stack.imgur.com/lkYVY.png — Eric Aya, Aug 20 '16 at 09:54

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 20 '16 at 14:36

While questions about how to convert from string to date is mostly about specifying the right format string, you should read what Apple has to say about NSDateFormatter and Internet Dates. The short version is that you should always specify the local as en_US_POSIX:

let dateString = "Tue, 16 Aug 2016 15:27:33 +0000"

let dateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
dateFormatter.locale = NSLocale(localeIdentifier: "en_US_POSIX")
dateFormatter.dateFormat = "E, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"

let date = dateFormatter.dateFromString(dateString)
print(date)

Swift 2: Parse RSS pubDate to NSDate object

1 Answers1