How to create an NSDate date object?

Question

How can I create an NSDate from the day, month and year? There don\'t seem to be any methods to do this and they have removed the class method dateWithString<

Answer 1

A slightly different answer to those already posted; if you have a fixed string format you'd like to use to create dates then you can use something like:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];

dateFormatter.locale = [NSLocale localeWithIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"]; 
    // see QA1480; NSDateFormatter otherwise reserves the right slightly to
    // modify any date string passed to it, according to user settings, per
    // it's other use, for UI work

dateFormatter.dateFormat = @"dd MMM yyyy"; 
    // or whatever you want; per the unicode standards

NSDate *dateFromString = [dateFormatter dateFromString:stringContainingDate];

Answer 2

You can use NSDateComponents:

NSDateComponents *comps = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init];
[comps setDay:6];
[comps setMonth:5];
[comps setYear:2004];
NSCalendar *gregorian = [[NSCalendar alloc]
    initWithCalendarIdentifier:NSCalendarIdentifierGregorian];
NSDate *date = [gregorian dateFromComponents:comps];
[comps release];

Answer 3

You could write a category for this. I did that, this is how the code looks:

//  NSDateCategory.h

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface NSDate (MBDateCat) 

+ (NSDate *)dateWithYear:(NSInteger)year month:(NSInteger)month day:(NSInteger)day;

@end



//  NSDateCategory.m

#import "NSDateCategory.h"

@implementation NSDate (MBDateCat)

+ (NSDate *)dateWithYear:(NSInteger)year month:(NSInteger)month day:(NSInteger)day {
    NSCalendar *calendar = [[[NSCalendar alloc] initWithCalendarIdentifier:NSGregorianCalendar] autorelease];
    NSDateComponents *components = [[[NSDateComponents alloc] init] autorelease];
    [components setYear:year];
    [components setMonth:month];
    [components setDay:day];
    return [calendar dateFromComponents:components];
}

@end

Use it like this: NSDate *aDate = [NSDate dateWithYear:2010 month:5 day:12];