Truncate NSDate (Zero-out time)

Benjamin picture Benjamin · Nov 15, 2010 · Viewed 13.5k times · Source

I want to generate a new NSDate with 0 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds for time. The source date can be any random NSDate.

Is there a way to achieve this? The documentation did not help me with this.


Example

Have: 2010-10-30 10:14:13 GMT

Want: 2010-10-30 00:00:00 GMT

Answer

Evan Mulawski picture Evan Mulawski · Nov 15, 2010
unsigned int flags = NSCalendarUnitYear | NSCalendarUnitMonth | NSCalendarUnitDay;
NSCalendar* calendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
NSDateComponents* components = [calendar components:flags fromDate:date];
NSDate* dateOnly = [calendar dateFromComponents:components];

date is the date you want to remove the time from.

This separates the date and time and creates a new date with the default time (00:00:00).

EDIT

To take time zone into account:

NSDate* dateOnly = [[calendar dateFromComponents:components] dateByAddingTimeInterval:[[NSTimeZone localTimeZone]secondsFromGMT]];