Class for generating text representations of NSDate s and NSCalendarDate s, and for converting strings into instances of these objects. Note that NSDate and NSCalendarDate do contain some string conversion methods, but using this class provides more control over conversion.

See the NSFormatter documentation for description of the basic methods for formatting and parsing that are available.

The basic format of a format string uses "%" codes to represent components of the date. Thus, for example, @"%b %d, %Y" specifies strings similar to "June 18, 1991". The full list of codes is as follows:

%%

a '%' character

%a

abbreviated weekday name

%A

full weekday name

%b

abbreviated month name

%B

full month name

%c

shorthand for "%X %x", the locale format for date and time

%d

day of the month as a decimal number (01-31)

%e

same as %d but does not print the leading 0 for days 1 through 9 (unlike strftime() , does not print a leading space)

%F

milliseconds as a decimal number (000-999)

%H

hour based on a 24-hour clock as a decimal number (00-23)

%I

hour based on a 12-hour clock as a decimal number (01-12)

%j

day of the year as a decimal number (001-366)

%m

month as a decimal number (01-12)

%M

minute as a decimal number (00-59)

%p

AM/PM designation for the locale

%S

second as a decimal number (00-59)

%w

weekday as a decimal number (0-6), where Sunday is 0

%x

date using the date representation for the locale, including the time zone (produces different results from strftime())

%X

time using the time representation for the locale (produces different results from strftime())

%y

year without century (00-99)

%Y

year with century (such as 1990)

%Z

time zone name (such as Pacific Daylight Time; produces different results from strftime())

%z

time zone offset in hours and minutes from GMT (HHMM)