Get day of week using NSDate

Question

I created a method that is supposed to take in a string in "YYYY-MM-DD" form and spit out an int that represents the dates position in relation to the week it is in (regardless if it overlaps between months). So e.g sunday=1 monday=2 and so on.

Here is my code:

    func getDayOfWeek(today:String)->Int{

    var formatter:NSDateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
    formatter.dateFormat = "YYYY-MM-DD"
    var todayDate:NSDate = formatter.dateFromString(today)!
    var myCalendar:NSCalendar = NSCalendar(calendarIdentifier: NSGregorianCalendar)
    var myComponents = myCalendar.components(NSCalendarUnit.WeekdayOrdinalCalendarUnit, fromDate: todayDate)
    var weekDay = myComponents.weekdayOrdinal
    return weekDay
}

I know that NSCalendarUnit.WeekdayOrdinalCalendar is wrong but I have tried I think most logical combinations. And have also messed around with myComponents.weekdayOrdinal e.g used mycomponents.day or .weekday.

Here are my options in what to use:

static var EraCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var YearCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var MonthCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var DayCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var HourCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var MinuteCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var SecondCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekdayCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekdayOrdinalCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var QuarterCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekOfMonthCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var WeekOfYearCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var YearForWeekOfYearCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var CalendarCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }
static var TimeZoneCalendarUnit: NSCalendarUnit { get }

It is not clear to me since there is no DayOfWeekUnit option (or something similar).

Answer 1

Swift 3 & 4

Retrieving the day of the week's number is dramatically simplified in Swift 3 because DateComponents is no longer optional. Here it is as an extension:

extension Date {
    func dayNumberOfWeek() -> Int? {
        return Calendar.current.dateComponents([.weekday], from: self).weekday 
    }
}

// returns an integer from 1 - 7, with 1 being Sunday and 7 being Saturday
print(Date().dayNumberOfWeek()!) // 4

If you were looking for the written, localized version of the day of week:

extension Date {
    func dayOfWeek() -> String? {
        let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
        dateFormatter.dateFormat = "EEEE"
        return dateFormatter.string(from: self).capitalized 
        // or use capitalized(with: locale) if you want
    }
}

print(Date().dayOfWeek()!) // Wednesday