String to date with UTC timezone

Question

I am struggling with Date and I'm assuming is TimeZone. Currently I get from my backend a string like this "2020-04-07" and when I try to convert it to date it turns into 2020-04-06 22:00:00 +0000. I am in Spain (UTC+2) which I guess this is why it removes 2 hours?

This is my date formatter:

var dateFormatter: DateFormatter = {
        let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
        dateFormatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd"
        dateFormatter.timeZone = TimeZone.current
        return dateFormatter
    }()

And I call it dateFormatter.date(from: startDateString)

I am setting my current timezone but seems to be ignoring it or am I missing something?

I have followed a lot of answers from here but it's always the same result.

Thank you

How are you outputting the description of the Date object? If you're just printing it to the console it will show it in UTC by default. — shim, Apr 06 '20 at 16:21
@shim what?? Really?? I just do a normal print()! How can I see what I'm sending to the server then? — Joan Cardona, Apr 06 '20 at 16:24
The `Date` object does not have any inherent locale / time zone. It just represents a moment in time. If you want to see that `Date` as a string you have to use a date formatter. Or there's `descriptionWithLocale`. I don't know how you're sending it to your server. — shim, Apr 06 '20 at 16:26
if I am understanding correctly and if you want ur date unchanged from whats returned from backend, then you can use `TimeZone(secondsFromGMT: 0)` to keep the date unchanged. — AppleCiderGuy, Apr 06 '20 at 16:26
I see no problem here. 2020-04-06 22:00:00 +0000 is 2020-04-07 00:00:00 in Spain, right? Note that Spain is two hours ahead of UTC, and dates are always `print`ed in UTC. — Sweeper, Apr 06 '20 at 16:28
I feel like this question is the one that has been asked hundreds of times before. See [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51397856/why-the-result-of-my-date-object-always-several-hours-behind-the-actual-string-t/51397957#51397957), [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49023814/swift-convert-string-to-date-output-wrong-date/49023964#49023964) and [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55688517/ios-swift-date-without-time/55688630#55688630). Can you explain how your question is different? — Sweeper, Apr 06 '20 at 16:35

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 06 '20 at 16:33

The Date object does not have any inherent locale / time zone. It just represents a moment in time. If you want to see that Date as a string in a specific locale/time zone you have to use a date formatter. Or there's descriptionWithLocale. If you use print it will print a debug description of the Date instance in UTC.

String to date with UTC timezone

1 Answers1