CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosnsdatensdateformatter
Eagle11
Eagle11

Reputation: 661

Format partial date based on locale

I'm trying to display the month and day of a given date, like so:

"November 5"

but allow it to change the order based on locale.

"5 November" (or whatever other people do)

I am aware that I can simply hard code the formats like so:

NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[formatter setDateFormat:@"MMMM d"];

But, this doesn't update for locale, and I don't want to have to hard code a list of locales that use one style or the other.

Generally when I want to display a date for a given local, I know that I can use setDateType on the formatter, and pick from a number of pre-existing formats that will nicely account for the current locale. Unfortunately, none of the existing NSDateFormatterStyle will display the way I need them to.

The one solution I have been able to think of is to set the date style to long style, and then read through the dateFormat string, and see if I hit a 'd' or 'M' first. Then format it accordingly. This would be fairly easy to do, but it seems really hacky. Surely there is a better way to do that.

Any suggestions?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 75

Answers (1)

Eagle11
Eagle11

Reputation: 661

Apparently NSDateFormatter dateFormatFromTemplate is a thing, and it solves my problem.

NSString *format = [NSDateFormatter dateFormatFromTemplate:@"MMMM d" options:0 locale:[NSLocale currentLocale]];

This will format the date correctly following your template according to current locale.

Upvotes: 1

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