How do I get weekday and/or name of month from a NSDate variable?

Question

Alright. The problem we're having is that we have NSStrings filled with dates in the format of yyyyMMdd and what we want to do is to get the current weekday and name of month. The function dagOmvandlare converts the datestring to weekday and month. The function is then called on viewDidload to name all our button-titles from english to swedish months.

our current solution is looking like this:

-(NSString *)dagOmvandlare:(id) suprDatum{

   NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
   dateFormatter.dateFormat = @"yyyyMMdd";

   NSDate *date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:suprDatum];


   NSString * monthString = [date descriptionWithCalendarFormat:@"%B"timeZone:nil
                                                         locale:[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] dictionaryRepresentation]];

   if ([monthString isEqualToString:@"January"]) {
       monthString = @"Januari";
   }
   else
       if ([monthString isEqualToString:@"February"]) {
           monthString = @"Februari";
       }
       else
           if ([monthString isEqualToString:@"May"]) {
               monthString = @"Maj";
           }
           else
               if ([monthString isEqualToString:@"June"]) {
                   monthString = @"Juni";
               }
               else
                   if ([monthString isEqualToString:@"July"]) {
                       monthString = @"Juli";
                   }
                   else
                       if ([monthString isEqualToString:@"August"]) {
                           monthString = @"Augusti";
                       }
                       else
                           if ([monthString isEqualToString:@"October"]) {
                               monthString = @"Oktober";
                           }
                           else
                               if ([monthString isEqualToString:@"March"]) {
                                   monthString = @"Mars";
                               }

   return monthString;

}



- (void)viewDidLoad {
   [super viewDidLoad];

    [button3 setTitle:(NSString *)[self dagOmvandlare:self.datum1] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
    [button2 setTitle:(NSString *)[self dagOmvandlare:self.datum2] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
    [bmanad1 setTitle:(NSString *)[self dagOmvandlare:self.datum3] forState:UIControlStateNormal];

}

And what we've figured out so far is that the

NSString * monthString = [date descriptionWithCalendarFormat:@"%B"timeZone:nil
                                                         locale:[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] dictionaryRepresentation]];

is not allowed to be used by Apples guidelines regarding non-public api's. So the primary question is, what other way is there to get weekday and name of month out of our datestrings that contain dates with the format yyyyMMdd ?

Answer 1

There is no need to manually convert to the Swedish words. iPhone will do it for you. Try this:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
dateFormatter.dateFormat = @"yyyyMMdd";
NSDate *date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:@"20111010"];

// set swedish locale
dateFormatter.locale=[[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"sv_SE"];

dateFormatter.dateFormat=@"MMMM";
NSString *monthString = [[dateFormatter stringFromDate:date] capitalizedString];
NSLog(@"month: %@", monthString);

dateFormatter.dateFormat=@"EEEE";
NSString *dayString = [[dateFormatter stringFromDate:date] capitalizedString];
NSLog(@"day: %@", dayString);

Output:

month: Oktober
day: Måndag