Objective-C Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

Chapter    ⁵

Working With Dates, Times, and Timers

This chapter covers how to work with dates and timers using the Foundation framework with Objective-C.

The recipes in this chapter will show you how to:

• Create today’s date using NSDate
• Create custom dates using NSDateComponents
• Compare dates
• Convert strings to dates
• Format dates for display on user interfaces
• Add and subtract dates
• Use a timer to schedule repeating and non-repeating code

5.1 Creating a Date Object for Today

Problem

You need to represent today’s date in your application.

Solution

Use the NSDate class method date to create a date object instance for the current date.

How It Works

NSDate is a class that is generally used with other classes (covered in the upcoming recipes). ...