How to make a countdown to date Swift

Question

I was facing the struggle of making a timer app, so I thought that now that I solved it I could help others who face the problem. So basically this app counts down to a specific

Answer 1

Cleaned up/updated for latest Swift version of the accepted answer.

    // here we set the current date

    let date = NSDate()
    let calendar = Calendar.current

    let components = calendar.dateComponents([.hour, .minute, .month, .year, .day], from: date as Date)

    let currentDate = calendar.date(from: components)

    let userCalendar = Calendar.current

    // here we set the due date. When the timer is supposed to finish
    let competitionDate = NSDateComponents()
    competitionDate.year = 2017
    competitionDate.month = 4
    competitionDate.day = 16
    competitionDate.hour = 00
    competitionDate.minute = 00
    let competitionDay = userCalendar.date(from: competitionDate as DateComponents)!

    //here we change the seconds to hours,minutes and days
    let CompetitionDayDifference = calendar.dateComponents([.day, .hour, .minute], from: currentDate!, to: competitionDay)


    //finally, here we set the variable to our remaining time
    let daysLeft = CompetitionDayDifference.day
    let hoursLeft = CompetitionDayDifference.hour
    let minutesLeft = CompetitionDayDifference.minute

    print("day:", daysLeft ?? "N/A", "hour:", hoursLeft ?? "N/A", "minute:", minutesLeft ?? "N/A")

    //Set countdown label text
    countDownLabel.text = "\(daysLeft ?? 0) Days, \(hoursLeft ?? 0) Hours, \(minutesLeft ?? 0) Minutes"