How to compare two dates in iphone?

Question

I want to compare the todays date and other date coming from my database. For example, 2011-03-25 compare it with 2011-02-25

How can i formate my database date as the NSDateFormatter require NSDdate datatype ?

From the looks of your question, your date coming from the database looks like they stored as strings. If so and they will always in the format of yyyy-MM-dd, you can use the -isEqualToString forever with no problem. But if you they are NSDate object see the answer from @Jhaliya. — Black Frog, Mar 25 '11 at 07:08

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Cocoa has couple of methods for this:

in NSDate

– isEqualToDate:
– earlierDate:
– laterDate:
– compare:

When you use - (NSComparisonResult)compare:(NSDate *)anotherDate ,you get back one of these:

The receiver and anotherDate are exactly equal to each other, NSOrderedSame
The receiver is later in time than anotherDate, NSOrderedDescending
The receiver is earlier in time than anotherDate, NSOrderedAscending.

for more read the SO post

Just go through the blog post, there are many date related utility functions.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2010/03/how-to-real-world-dates-with-the-iphone-sdk.ars/2

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 25 '11 at 06:41

1

NSDate *date1 = [NSDate date];
NSDate *date2 = [NSDate date];

if ([date1 compare: date2]==NSOrderedAscending) {
    NSLog(@"YES");
}

answered Mar 25 '11 at 06:41

Angelo

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 25 '14 at 16:51

0

In Swift:

let date1 = NSDate() //some date
let date2 = NSDate() //another date

let firstDate = date1.earlierDate(date2)
let lastDate = date1.laterDate(date2)

answered Nov 25 '14 at 16:51

raf

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 25 '11 at 06:36

0

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/DatesAndTimes/Articles/dtDates.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000183-BCIDBADB

Isn't that the same on Iphone?

answered Mar 25 '11 at 06:36

Friedrich

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 25 '11 at 06:38

If your date are string like year-month-day, you can just compare string:

 if ([date1 compare:string2]==NSOrderedAscending) {
 } else if ([date1 compare:string2]== NSOrderedDescending) {
 } else {
 }

It will works because fields in date are from most important to less, like a string comparison.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 25 '11 at 06:38

0

You can use NSDate compare: or timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate -- that'll get you started

answered Mar 25 '11 at 06:38

jnpdx

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How to compare two dates in iphone?

6 Answers6

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