Preventing Date from being localized - ios

Question

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

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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
}

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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)

Answer 5

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.