It's generaly accepted as a good practise to store dates as UTC/GMT and convert them back to local time when they need to be displayed to the user. Working currently on calendar app I am wondering how to do this for future/past dates taking into account the current Daylight saving time.
Date to UTC:
let date = Date()
let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
dateFormatter.timeZone = TimeZone(abbreviation: "UTC")
let dt = dateFormatter.date(from: date)
Date back to local time:
let date = Date()
let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
dateFormatter.timeZone = TimeZone.current
let dt = dateFormatter.date(from: date)
Example:
When a user living in Amsterdam schedules a future meeting from 4pm to 5pm (UTC+2). I'll be storing the UTC equivalent which is 2pm to 3pm.
Now if he would like check his meeting in two months when Amsterdam has passed from summer- to winter-time (UTC-1), the user will see that his meeting has shifted to 3pm - 4pm.
How would I best tackle this ?
Related
Here is my DateFormatter Code
let formatter = DateFormatter()
formatter.dateFormat = "MMM dd"
let dateString = formatter.string(from: date)
Now:
po dateString
gives the result "May 18"
po date gives the result 2021-05-17 18:30:00 +0000
This does not make sense to me - why is the Date May 17 2021 being converted to the String May 18?
A Date object records an instant in time anywhere on the planet.
That instant in time will be on a different calendar day (day/month/year) depending on what time zone you are in.
By default, date formatters work in the device's current time zone.
When you log a Date using po date or print(date) the default description of a Date displays that date in UTC using the ISO 8601 date format. Depending on the user's time zone, the Date in UTC might be on a different calendar day than it is in the local time zone
If you want to log a date in the user's local time zone, use po date.description(with: Locale.current) or po DateFormatter.localizedString(from: date, dateStyle: .medium, timeStyle: .medium)
This depends on the current time zone of the formatter used , for 0 based use
formatter.timeZone = TimeZone(abbreviation: "UTC")
I have the following string:
let dateString = "2018-04-18T04:54:00-04:00"
I initialize a Date via the ISO8601DateForamtter by doing the following:
let formatter = ISO8601DateFormatter()
let date = formatter.date(from: dateString)
If I print the date, I get the following:
Apr 18, 2018 at 1:54am
The formatter is automatically converting the time into my local time. How can I prevent accounting for my time zone? For example, I want the Date object to show the following instead:
Apr 18, 2018 at 4:54am
With ISO8601, 2018-04-18T04:54:00-04:00 means 2018-04-18 04:54:00 in GMT -4h. To print the time as it is in the original string, you need to create a date formatter with the specific time zone which is -4.
let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
dateFormatter.timeZone = TimeZone(secondsFromGMT: -4 * 60 * 60)
dateFormatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"
print(dateFormatter.string(from: date))
You will get
2018-04-17 04:54:00
FYI, I'm adding a link for ISO8601
You need to parse the timezone from your date string and use it to set the timezone from your date formatter:
func secondsFromGMT(from string: String) -> Int {
guard !string.hasSuffix("Z") else { return 0 }
let timeZone = string.suffix(6)
let comps = timeZone.components(separatedBy: ":")
guard let hours = comps.first,
let minutes = comps.last,
let hr = Int(hours),
let min = Int(minutes) else { return 0 }
return hr * 3600 + min * 60
}
let dateString = "2018-04-18T04:54:00-04:00"
let formatter = DateFormatter()
formatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssxxxxx"
formatter.locale = Locale(identifier: "en_US_POSIX")
if let dateFromString = formatter.date(from: dateString) {
formatter.timeZone = TimeZone(secondsFromGMT: secondsFromGMT(from: dateString))
formatter.dateFormat = "MMM dd, yyyy 'at' h:mma"
formatter.amSymbol = "am"
formatter.pmSymbol = "pm"
print(formatter.string(from: dateFromString)) // Apr 18, 2018 at 4:54am
}
Instead of logging the Date directly, have a look at the string(from:timeZone:formatOptions:) method on ISO8601DateFormatter. With this, you should be able to get a date string for any time zone you desire.
You should set your formatter to the appropriate timezone such as (UTC example below):
formatter.timeZone = TimeZone(identifier: "UTC")
or alternatively specify against GMT:
formatter.timeZone = TimeZone(secondsFromGMT: 0)
The date that you are receiving from your current formatter is technically correct. Setting the date backwards as described in the currently accepted answer is not advised because you are effectively hard-coding an intended time zone. As soon as your device enters another time zone (or if a user downloads your app outside of the current time zone), your information will be incorrect.
If you are trying to display this time in the UTC time zone, you need to use another formatter to correctly format the output in the target time zone.
let utcFormatter = DateFormatter()
utcFormatter.timeZone = TimeZone(secondsFromGMT: 0)
// Perform any other transformations you'd like
let output = utcFormatter.string(from: date)
But why is your original date correct?
The Date API is incredibly robust and doing a lot of things under-the-hood, but is effectively implemented using a simple Double. The automaic time-zone information that it's displaying to you is an abstraction to make it easier to reason about. A date technically has no knowledge of what time zone it's in – but converting it to a string implicitly applies an inferred date formatter on the date and returns information it thinks will be most useful to you.
If you're doing manipulations on a date, you're likely using the Calendar API. You typically get a new instance from using Calendar.current, which will create a new calendar with your current time zone information. You can change the represented time zone of the calendar like this:
var calendar = Calendar.current
calendar.timeZone = TimeZone(secondsFromGMT: 0)
This will give you relative dates that will work in any time zone without modifying the base Date object that you're working with.
I know how to get local date and time, but what I want to do is getting the date and time from different places. For example, I want to find out what the time and date is in New York. How can i solve this simple problem?
Here is my code for local date and time :
let date = NSDate()
let calendar = Calendar.current
let components = calendar.dateComponents([.hour, .minute, .month, .year, .day, .second, .weekOfMonth], from: date as Date)
let currentDate = calendar.date(from: components)
I searched about it here, but i didn't find what i want and I'm still looking for the date libaries. If you know any source or sample to redirect me, I really appreciate that.
There are several different concepts involved here, and we need to understand (almost) all of them to get this right...
1) a Date (NSDate as was, in Swift) is an absolute point in time - it's slightly mis-named, because it has nothing to do with an actual date like 13th November 2017, because to get to that we need to define ...
2) a Calendar, because 13th November 2017 in the western Gregorian calendar could also be 23rd Safar 1439 in the Islamic calendar, or the 24th of Heshvan 5778 in the Hebrew calendar, or some other things in the many other calendars that iOS & MacOS support;
3) in turn Calendar changes not only what values are returned in the DateComponents that we have to use to unpack a Date + Calendar into days, months, years & eras (e.g. BC/AD), or even week number, etc..., but also some calendars might not have the same components as others;
4) time-of-day (as you know) depends on TimeZone, so the same absolute time can be one of many different times "o'clock" depending on where you are. It may also (as you can see in the example below) change the date as well as the "o'clock". This of course could be automatic (where you are) or set by the programmer;
5) further, we have DateFormatter (which is a convenience that wraps up DateComponents), because 13th November 2017 could be represented as 13/11/17 or 11/13/17 depending on whether you are British or American. We may also wish to choose whether we use text or numeric months, and, if displaying times, whether we want 12 hour or 24 hour format - all of these are covered by DateFormatter, but text representation may be "13e Novembre 2017" if you are French, which introduces the notion of
6) Locale, which can be set, like TimeZone, as being default (as chosen when you set up the device) or specified by the programmer.
The code you posted won't work, because all it does is takes a Date, transforms it through a Calendar to DateComponents (all good so far), but then recreates a Date from the components - all you will get is the original Date - the same absolute point in time.
What I believe from the question and your answers to questions in the comments is that you want a function that takes an absolute time (eg "now") aka a Date and displays it in a specific TimeZone. This works:
func timeComponents(date: Date, timeZone: TimeZone) -> DateComponents {
var calendar = Calendar.current
calendar.timeZone = timeZone
return calendar.dateComponents([.hour, .minute, .month, .year, .day, .second, .weekOfMonth], from: date)
}
let absTime: Date = Date() // Now
let edinburgh = TimeZone(abbreviation: "GMT")!
let newYork = TimeZone(abbreviation: "EST")!
let ec = timeComponents(date: absTime, timeZone: edinburgh)
let nycc = timeComponents(date: absTime, timeZone: newYork)
print(ec)// year: 2017 month: 11 day: 14 hour: 0 minute: 44 second: 10 weekOfMonth: 3 isLeapMonth: false
print(nycc) // year: 2017 month: 11 day: 13 hour: 19 minute: 44 second: 10 weekOfMonth: 3 isLeapMonth: false
... which I think answers the minimum of your question, but to finesse it, we need to move from DateComponents to DateFormatter
func timeString(date: Date, timeZone: TimeZone, timeStyle: DateFormatter.Style) -> String {
let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
dateFormatter.timeZone = timeZone
dateFormatter.dateStyle = .none
dateFormatter.timeStyle = timeStyle
return dateFormatter.string(from: date)
}
let es = timeString(date: absTime, timeZone: edinburgh, timeStyle: .full)
let nycs = timeString(date: absTime, timeZone: newYork, timeStyle: .full)
print(es) // 12:44:10 AM Greenwich Mean Time
print(nycs) // 7:44:10 PM Eastern Standard Time
You can go on, and start to use Locale, if you want to internationalise your app, but I'l leave that as an exercise!
p.s. These are not all of the concepts - see here
p.p.s. See also this answer and this answer (neither duplicates)
If you just want to format the date to a string, consider using a DateFormatter instead:
let date = Date()
let formatter = DateFormatter()
formatter.timeZone = TimeZone(identifier: "America/New_York")
formatter.dateStyle = .long
formatter.timeStyle = .long
formatter.string(from: date)
If you want to get the date components and process them, use the dateComponents(in:from:) method.
let components = Calendar.current.dateComponents(in: TimeZone(identifier: "America/New_York")!, from: date)
If you don't know the time zone of the place you are searching for, you can use the CoreLocation's CLGeocoder and search on an address string. Then you can get the timezone for that place and translate that into the time you're looking for:
let geocoder = CLGeocoder()
geocoder.geocodeAddressString("New York, New York") { (placemarks, error) in
guard error == nil else {
print("Error")
print(error!.localizedDescription)
return
}
guard let placemarks = placemarks,
let place = placemarks.first else {
print("No results")
return
}
if let timeZone = place.timeZone {
print("TimeZone: \(timeZone.identifier)")
// TimeZone: America/New_York
//Ignore the time zone offset from this one, it will be the difference between the current time and the new york time
let dateInNewYork = Date().addingTimeInterval(TimeInterval.init(timeZone.secondsFromGMT()))
print(dateInNewYork)
// 2017-11-13 15:03:05 +0000
//Or
let formatter = DateFormatter()
formatter.timeZone = TimeZone(identifier: timeZone.identifier)
formatter.dateStyle = .long
formatter.timeStyle = .long
let formattedDateInNewYork = formatter.string(from: Date())
print(formattedDateInNewYork)
// November 13, 2017 at 3:03:05 PM EST
//Or
let components = Calendar.current.dateComponents(in: TimeZone(identifier: timeZone.identifier)!, from: Date())
print(components.date!)
// 2017-11-13 20:03:05 +0000
}
}
I'm trying to get the current date to print in a particular format (YYYYMMD) for AWS security credentials and I noticed that when I do Date(), the day is the 4th which is the correct value:
let date = Date()
print("\(date)") //2016-10-04 00:56:28 +0000
Now, I want to print the date in the format I desire so, but I keep getting the day value as the 3rd:
let calendar = Calendar.current
let date = Date()
let components = calendar.dateComponents([.day], from: date)
print("\(components.day)") //Optional(3)
S3 is expecting the date to be the 4th. How can I fix this?
It's because of time zone difference. date will return the UTC time and date but calendar will return the date and time based on your device's time zone. If you need the day number in UTC just set the time zone of the calendar object to UTC after you create it:
let calendar = Calendar.current
calendar.timeZone = TimeZone(abbreviation: "UTC")!
Now it will always match the value that is returned by Date()
When you print a date using
print("\(date)")
You get the date and time in UTC, which is probably not what you want.
If you want to display your date in your local time zone, create a date formatter and use that:
let dateFormatter = NSdateFormatter()
let dateFormatter.dateStyle = .medium
let dateFormatter.timeStyle = .medium
let dateString = dateFormatter.StringFromDate(date)
print ("date = \(dateString)")
If you do this a lot, you might want to create an extension on NSDate displayString so you can use that to display your dates without having to write additional code.
I need to store Date variable in CoreData in iOS
I need to store the Date only without the Time, So I made a formatter that discard the time partition from the NSDate variable.
But I have a strange result:
This is my code:
let dateStr = "2016-02-14 11:27:01"
let df2 = NSDateFormatter()
df2.timeZone = NSTimeZone.defaultTimeZone()
df2.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"
print(dateStr)
if let date = df2.dateFromString(dateStr) {
df2.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd"
print("-> \(df2.dateFromString(df2.stringFromDate(date)))")
}
and this is the output:
2016-02-14 11:27:01
-> Optional(2016-02-13 20:00:00 +0000)
Why does the formatter decrease the day by one ?
I tried many dates with same issue
Your time zone is obviously UTC+4.
To get UTC set the time zone accordingly.
df2.timeZone = NSTimeZone(forSecondsFromGMT: 0)
But although you see a date 4 hours ago the NSDate object is treated correctly depending on your time zone. The print command displays always UTC ignoring the time zone information, because NSDate is just a wrapper for a Double number.