Objective-C, How can I get the current date in UTC timezone?

Question

I am trying:

NSDate *currentDateInLocal = [NSDate date];
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:SS.SSS'Z'"];
NSString *currentLocalDateAsStr = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:currentDateInLocal];

NSDateFormatter * dateFormatter2 = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
NSTimeZone *timeZone = [NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:@"UTC"];
[dateFormatter2 setTimeZone:timeZone];
[dateFormatter2 setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:SS.SSS'Z'"];
NSDate *currentDateInUTC = [dateFormatter2 dateFromString:currentLocalDateAsStr];

but It's still does not represent the current UTC time, how can I achieve this?

Thanks

Answer 1

You're overcomplicating things.

NSDates don't have time zones or calendars. [NSDate date] gets the current date, which is a measurement of a moment in history. If I run [NSDate date] in Europe at exactly the same time as you run it in America then we'll get exactly the same value.

How you print a date depends on the calendar and the time zone. So a date printed in the Gregorian calendar looks different from the same one printed in the Julian calendar. And a date printed in the UTC Gregorian calendar looks different from the same one printed in the PST Gregorian calendar. But they're still the same date.

So you want to jump straight to your dateFormatter2.