iOS how to show a date in another language, - ios

Question

I've recently been working on a French version of our application use NSLocalizedStrings, so far everything is working great.
But my problem now is with dates. I show dates often in my application, in different formats, depending on the situation.
Ex:
-Fri Feb 22, 2013
-Monday February 18, 2013
-Feb 18
-Dec 5, 2012
The thing is, dates in French are not only different in terms of the name of the month, but also the order in which month, day and year appear.
Ex:
-Dec 5, 2012 would be 5 Dec 2012
-Monday February 18, 2013 would be Lundi le 18 Fevrier 2013.
I have the individual month/day names in my Localizable.string files, but how do I manage the order of how it's displayed.
Should I have an if statement that checks the current device language like so?:
NSString *currentLanguage = [[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0];
if([currentLanguage isEqualToString:#"fr"])
{
//Handle French logic
}
This is probably not the best way to go about it.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

You should use an NSDateFormatter and feed it your desired NSLocale like this:
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
dateFormatter.locale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:#"nl_NL"];
dateFormatter.dateFormat = #"EEEE d MMMM yyyy HH:mm";
'EEEE' is the full name of the day of the week, which, in my case, will be displayed in dutch.

Answer 2

Use NSDateFormatter. For example:
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterMediumStyle];
[dateFormatter setTimeStyle:NSDateFormatterNoStyle];
NSDate *date = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceReferenceDate:162000];
NSString *formattedDateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date];
NSLog(#"formattedDateString: %#", formattedDateString);
NSDateFormatterMediumStyle will automatically format the date according to the user's preference (English, French, etc.).
If you need custom styling and the app runs in iOS 4.0+, you can use a custom template in your date formatter:
NSString *formatString = [NSDateFormatter dateFormatFromTemplate:#"EdMMMyyy" options:0
locale:[NSLocale currentLocale]];
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:formatString];
NSString *todayString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:[NSDate date]];
NSLog(#"todayString: %#", todayString);

Answer 3

Set proper locale to your NSDateFormatter when you convert date to string, then date formatter will handle all specifics of formats depending on user settings for you:
NSDateFormatter *formatter = ... // Create and setup formatter
[formatter setLocale:[NSLocale autoupdatingCurrentLocale]];
// Now you can convert date to string

Answer 4

That's probaly much easier:
There is something which is called
NSDateFormatterShortStyle,
NSDateFormatterMediumStyle
NSDateFormatterLongStyle
Set Date and Time components individually:
[dateFormatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterMediumStyle];
[dateFormatter setTimeStyle:NSDateFormatterNoStyle];
Ios will format that correctly if the language of the user.
Further look at Data Formatting Guide

Answer 5

I would try the class function localizedStringFromDate:dateStyle:timeStyle: in NSDateFormatter before attempting to use the NSDateFormatter and a template (from Unicode Technical Standard #35):
Example:
[NSDateFormatter localizedStringFromDate:dateTime dateStyle:NSDateFormatterMediumStyle timeStyle:NSDateFormatterNoStyle];
You can select both different date and time outputs of various lengths detailed in the docs.
Apple documentation: NSDateFormatter localizedStringFromDate:dateStyle:timeStyle: