NSDate/NSDateFormatter - Storing only time, not date?

Question

I\'ve been looking around but I haven\'t seen anything that addresses this so I\'m hoping someone can help clear this up for me. What I am trying to do is use an NSDate variable

Answer 1

After setting the locale and the date format you should be able to convert from date to string and back. Because you just need the time, you can ignore the date part.

NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[formatter setLocale:[[[NSLocale alloc] 
                 initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US"] autorelease]];
[formatter setDateFormat:@"HH:mm:ss"];
NSString *etaStr = @"00:14:00";
NSDate *generatedDate = [formatter dateFromString:etaStr];
NSLog(@"%@", [formatter stringFromDate:generatedDate]);
[formatter release];

Output

00:14:00

Swift version

Time to update this answer for swift:

var formatter = NSDateFormatter()
formatter.locale = NSLocale(localeIdentifier: "en_US")
formatter.dateFormat = "HH:mm:ss"
let etaString = "00:14:00"
let generatedDate = formatter.dateFromString(etaString)!
let generatedString = formatter.stringFromDate(generatedDate)
println(generatedString)

Swift 3 version

var formatter = DateFormatter()
formatter.locale = Locale(identifier: "en_US")
formatter.dateFormat = "HH:mm:ss"
let etaString = "00:14:00"
let generatedDate = formatter.date(from: etaString)!
let generatedString = formatter.string(from: generatedDate)
print(generatedString)