How to compare two NSDates: Which is more recent?

Question

I am trying to achieve a dropBox sync and need to compare the dates of two files. One is on my dropBox account and one is on my iPhone.

I came up with the following, but I get unexpected results. I guess I'm doing something fundamentally wrong when comparing the two dates. I simply used the > < operators, but I guess this is no good as I am comparing two NSDate strings. Here we go:

NSLog(@"dB...lastModified: %@", dbObject.lastModifiedDate); 
NSLog(@"iP...lastModified: %@", [self getDateOfLocalFile:@"NoteBook.txt"]);

if ([dbObject lastModifiedDate] < [self getDateOfLocalFile:@"NoteBook.txt"]) {
    NSLog(@"...db is more up-to-date. Download in progress...");
    [self DBdownload:@"NoteBook.txt"];
    NSLog(@"Download complete.");
} else {
    NSLog(@"...iP is more up-to-date. Upload in progress...");
    [self DBupload:@"NoteBook.txt"];
    NSLog(@"Upload complete.");
}

This gave me the following (random & wrong) output:

2011-05-11 14:20:54.413 NotePage[6918:207] dB...lastModified: 2011-05-11 13:18:25 +0000
2011-05-11 14:20:54.414 NotePage[6918:207] iP...lastModified: 2011-05-11 13:20:48 +0000
2011-05-11 14:20:54.415 NotePage[6918:207] ...db is more up-to-date.

or this one which happens to be correct:

2011-05-11 14:20:25.097 NotePage[6903:207] dB...lastModified: 2011-05-11 13:18:25 +0000
2011-05-11 14:20:25.098 NotePage[6903:207] iP...lastModified: 2011-05-11 13:19:45 +0000
2011-05-11 14:20:25.099 NotePage[6903:207] ...iP is more up-to-date.

Answer 1

You want to use the NSDate compare:, laterDate:, earlierDate:, or isEqualToDate: methods. Using the < and > operators in this situation is comparing the pointers, not the dates

Answer 2

In Swift, you can overload existing operators:

func > (lhs: NSDate, rhs: NSDate) -> Bool {
    return lhs.timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate > rhs.timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate
}

func < (lhs: NSDate, rhs: NSDate) -> Bool {
    return lhs.timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate < rhs.timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate
}

Then, you can compare NSDates directly with <, >, and == (already supported).

Answer 3

You should use :

- (NSComparisonResult)compare:(NSDate *)anotherDate

to compare dates. There is no operator overloading in objective C.

Answer 4

Use this simple function for date comparison

-(BOOL)dateComparision:(NSDate*)date1 andDate2:(NSDate*)date2{

BOOL isTokonValid;

if ([date1 compare:date2] == NSOrderedDescending) {
    NSLog(@"date1 is later than date2");
    isTokonValid = YES;
} else if ([date1 compare:date2] == NSOrderedAscending) {
    NSLog(@"date1 is earlier than date2");
    isTokonValid = NO;
} else {
    isTokonValid = NO;
    NSLog(@"dates are the same");
}

return isTokonValid;}

Answer 5

Late to the party, but another easy way of comparing NSDate objects is to convert them into primitive types which allows for easy use of '>' '<' '==' etc

eg.

if ([dateA timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate] > [dateB timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate]) {
    //do stuff
}

timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate converts the date into seconds since the reference date (1 January 2001, GMT). As timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate returns a NSTimeInterval (which is a double typedef), we can use primitive comparators.

Answer 6

You can compare two date by this method also

        switch ([currenttimestr  compare:endtimestr])
        {
            case NSOrderedAscending:

                // dateOne is earlier in time than dateTwo
                break;

            case NSOrderedSame:

                // The dates are the same
                break;
            case NSOrderedDescending:

                // dateOne is later in time than dateTwo


                break;

        }