Swift: How to parse date & time string with timezone abbreviation?

Question

I receive a date & time string from a server with an information about a timezone formatted in an unusual way:

2017-05-05T12:24:16.286462Z[UTC]

I would like to use DateFormatter to parse it, but I cannot figure out what date format should I use.

I tried parsing it with "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ'['R']'" or something quite similar but with no luck.

Here is my code:

let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
dateFormatter.locale = Locale(identifier: "en-US")
dateFormatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ'['R']'"
let date = dateFormatter.date(from: date)

What is the right date format for this string?

Have a look at this [updated answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/36862041/4056108) — chirag90, Aug 27 '19 at 13:13
@chirag90 Thank you for your help, but I'm trying to achieve quite the opposite. I'm searching for the way to parse string into date, not to print date as a string. — Mateusz Chechliński, Aug 27 '19 at 13:15

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 27 '19 at 13:19

2

OK guys, I figured it out.

The right format is

"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z['zzz']'"

zzz is for a timezone abbreviation, while Z[ and ] are treated as a plain text.

answered Aug 27 '19 at 13:19

Mateusz Chechliński

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 27 '19 at 13:40

1

An alternative approach with ISO8601DateFormatter. The [UTC] portion is stripped with Regular Expression

let dateString = "2017-05-05T12:24:16.286462Z[UTC]"

let formatter = ISO8601DateFormatter()
formatter.formatOptions = [.withInternetDateTime, .withFractionalSeconds]
let date = formatter.date(from: dateString.replacingOccurrences(of: "\\[^\\[+\\]", with: "", options: .regularExpression))

answered Aug 27 '19 at 13:40

vadian

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Have you tested it? Are you sure that the hanging "Z" character will not be a problem? – Mateusz Chechliński Aug 27 '19 at 13:55
@MateuszChechliński Yes, I'm sure. But feel free to use the pattern `"Z\\[^\\[+\\]"` – vadian Aug 27 '19 at 13:56

Swift: How to parse date & time string with timezone abbreviation?

2 Answers2