How do I parse an ISO 8601/RFC 3339 timezone with NSDateFormatter?

Question

I have a date string like this (ISO 8601 combined date and time representation or RFC 3339):

2010-09-04T19:13:00Z

But how do I configure the NSDateFormatter to accept this timezone format?

Answer 1

[NSDateFormatter setDefaultFormatterBehavior:NSDateFormatterBehavior10_4];
NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[formatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ"];
NSDate *date = [formatter dateFromString:'2010-09-04T19:13:00Z'];

Answer 2

Have a look here about what Apple recommends:

// Convert the RFC 3339 date time string to an NSDate.

NSDateFormatter *rfc3339DateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];

NSLocale *enUSPOSIXLocale = [NSLocale localeWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"];

[rfc3339DateFormatter setLocale:enUSPOSIXLocale];
[rfc3339DateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy'-'MM'-'dd'T'HH':'mm':'ss'Z'"];
[rfc3339DateFormatter setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneForSecondsFromGMT:0]];

NSDate *date = [rfc3339DateFormatter dateFromString:rfc3339DateTimeString];