Difference between two NSDate objects -- Result also a NSDate

Question

I have two NSDate objects and I want the difference between the two and the result should again be a NSDate object. Any idea how to achieve this?

Here, I am trying to address a unique problem where I have to find out the elapsed time and then localize the elapsed time. I can localize it if I have the elapsed time in NSDate object. So thought of creating a NSDate object which has its time component same as time interval between the two dates so that I could use NSDateFormatter to localize it.

Answer 1

NSDate represents an instance in time, so it doesn't make sense to represent an interval of time as an NSDate. What you want is NSDateComponents:

NSDate *dateA;
NSDate *dateB;

NSCalendar *calendar = [[NSCalendar alloc] initWithCalendarIdentifier:NSCalendarIdentifierGregorian];
NSDateComponents *components = [calendar components:NSCalendarUnitYear|NSCalendarUnitMonth|NSCalendarUnitDay
                                           fromDate:dateA
                                             toDate:dateB
                                            options:0];

NSLog(@"Difference in date components: %i/%i/%i", components.day, components.month, components.year);