NSDataDetector can't detect date nor time in "2014-11-21T08:05:16+0400"

Question

(this applies to OSX, have not tested on iOS)

Before you ask 'why such a silly date format': I use meta data pulled from files created on the iPhone/iPad. Photos and videos contain a 'creationDate' Metadata Tag that returns an NSString in exactly this format. Now if I feed this string:

@"2014-11-21T08:05:16+0400"

into NSDateDetector the following way:

__block NSDate *detectedDate;
NSDataDetector *detector = [NSDataDetector dataDetectorWithTypes:NSTextCheckingTypeDate error:nil];
[detector enumerateMatchesInString:self
                           options:kNilOptions
                             range:NSMakeRange(0, [self length])
                        usingBlock:^(NSTextCheckingResult *result, NSMatchingFlags flags, BOOL *stop)

 { detectedDate = result.date; }];

 NSLog(detectedDate.description);

I receive a completely bogus value:

"2014-12-12 14:16:00 CET"

• The date "2014-12-12" is today's date, not 2014-11-21 as it should
• The time "14:16:00 CET" is complete fracked, not even the time the code ran

So we have at least two possibilities here - basically NSDateDetector can't process the standard format Apple encodes dates on the iPhone OR I've made an obvious error in my code that I can't find. I'd be happy if the second was true, so can you tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Oh, I'm running this on Mavericks / XCode 5. Anyone? Please? -ch

Answer 1

NSDataDetector is not meant to parse dates like that. Data detectors are meant to detect "human" patterns in written text.

If you want to parse dates, you should use NSDateFormatter.