objective c - my NSDateFormatter works only in the iPhone simulator

Question

I use a NSDateFormatter which works fine in the simulator, but I get a nil when I run it in the iPhone. I hardcoded the date to be sure of the format, but it fails anyway.

NSString *strPubDate = @"Fri, 8 May 2009 08:08:35 GMT";
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSDateFormatterBehavior10_4];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"];

NSDate *myDate = [dateFormatter dateFromString:strPubDate];

I tried with different region settings, languages etc. on the iPhone. Any idea what is going wrong?

Answer 1

This code seems to work correctly against the "GMT" tag.

NSString *strPubDate = @"Fri, 8 May 2009 08:08:35 GMT";
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzzz"];
NSDate *myDate = [dateFormatter dateFromString:strPubDate];

RFC822 Date and Time specs use a few "zone" tags and I found the correct symbol to parse the "GMT" tag Format String for the iPhone NSDateFormatter

• z~zzz: (Specific GMT Timezone Abbreviation)
• zzzz: (Specific GMT Timezone Name)
• Z: +0000 (RFC 822 Timezone

Thanks for all your help!