Ordinal Month-day Suffix Option for NSDateFormatte

Question

What setDateFormat option for NSDateFormatter do I use to get a month-day's ordinal suffix?

e.g. the snippet below currently produces:
3:11 PM Saturday August 15

What must I change to get:
3:11 PM Saturday August 15th

NSDate *date = [NSDate date];
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[dateFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSDateFormatterBehavior10_4];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"h:mm a EEEE MMMM d"];
NSString *dateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date]; 
NSLog(@"%@", dateString);

In PHP, I'd use this for the case above:
<?php echo date('h:m A l F jS') ?>

Is there an NSDateFormatter equivalent to the S option in the PHP formatting string?

Answer 1

None of these answers were as aesthetically pleasing as what I'm using, so I thought I would share:

---

Swift 3:

func daySuffix(from date: Date) -> String {
    let calendar = Calendar.current
    let dayOfMonth = calendar.component(.day, from: date)
    switch dayOfMonth {
    case 1, 21, 31: return "st"
    case 2, 22: return "nd"
    case 3, 23: return "rd"
    default: return "th"
    }
}

---

Objective-C:

- (NSString *)daySuffixForDate:(NSDate *)date {
    NSCalendar *calendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
    NSInteger dayOfMonth = [calendar component:NSCalendarUnitDay fromDate:date];
    switch (dayOfMonth) {
        case 1:
        case 21:
        case 31: return @"st";
        case 2:
        case 22: return @"nd";
        case 3:
        case 23: return @"rd";
        default: return @"th";
    }
}

---

Obviously, this only works for English.

Answer 2

Here's another implementation for a method to generate the suffix. The suffixes it produces are only valid in English and may not be correct in other languages:

- (NSString *)suffixForDayInDate:(NSDate *)date
{
    NSInteger day = [[[[NSCalendar alloc] initWithCalendarIdentifier:NSGregorianCalendar] components:NSDayCalendarUnit fromDate:date] day];
    if (day >= 11 && day <= 13) {
        return @"th";
    } else if (day % 10 == 1) {
        return @"st";
    } else if (day % 10 == 2) {
        return @"nd";
    } else if (day % 10 == 3) {
        return @"rd";
    } else {
        return @"th";
    }
}

Answer 3

This will give string in format "10:10 PM Saturday, 2nd August"

   -(NSString*) getTimeInString:(NSDate*)date
    {
        NSString* string=@"";
        NSDateComponents *components = [[NSCalendar currentCalendar] components: NSCalendarUnitDay fromDate:date];

        if(components.day == 1 || components.day == 21 || components.day == 31){
             string = @"st";
        }else if (components.day == 2 || components.day == 22){
            string = @"nd";
        }else if (components.day == 3 || components.day == 23){
             string = @"rd";
        }else{
             string = @"th";
        }

        NSDateFormatter *prefixDateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];    [prefixDateFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSDateFormatterBehavior10_4];
        [prefixDateFormatter setDateFormat:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"h:mm a EEEE, d'%@' MMMM",string]];

        NSString *dateString = [prefixDateFormatter stringFromDate:date];

        return dateString;
    }

Answer 4

The NSDateFormatter documentation says that all the format options it supports are listed in TR35.

Why do you want this? If you're making something for a machine to parse, you should use ISO 8601 format, or RFC 2822 format if you have to. Neither one of those requires or allows an ordinal suffix.

If you're showing dates to the user, you should use one of the formats from the user's locale settings.

Answer 5

NSDate *date = [NSDate date];
NSDateFormatter *prefixDateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[prefixDateFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSDateFormatterBehavior10_4];
[prefixDateFormatter setDateFormat:@"h:mm a EEEE MMMM d"];
NSString *prefixDateString = [prefixDateFormatter stringFromDate:date];
NSDateFormatter *monthDayFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[monthDayFormatter setFormatterBehavior:NSDateFormatterBehavior10_4];
[monthDayFormatter setDateFormat:@"d"];     
int date_day = [[monthDayFormatter stringFromDate:date] intValue];  
NSString *suffix_string = @"|st|nd|rd|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|st|nd|rd|th|th|th|th|th|th|th|st";
NSArray *suffixes = [suffix_string componentsSeparatedByString: @"|"];
NSString *suffix = [suffixes objectAtIndex:date_day];   
NSString *dateString = [prefixDateString stringByAppendingString:suffix];   
NSLog(@"%@", dateString);

Answer 6

This will do the formatting in two steps: first, create a sub-string that is the day with an appropriate suffix, then create a format string for the remaining parts, plugging in the already-formatted day.

func ordinalDate(date: Date) -> String {
    let ordinalFormatter = NumberFormatter()
    ordinalFormatter.numberStyle = .ordinal
    let day = Calendar.current.component(.day, from: date)
    let dayOrdinal = ordinalFormatter.string(from: NSNumber(value: day))!

    let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
    dateFormatter.dateFormat = "h:mm a EEEE MMMM '\(dayOrdinal)'"
    return dateFormatter.string(from: Date())
}

Since the ordinal day is built by NumberFormatter, it should work in all languages, not just English.

You could get a format string ordered for the current locale by replacing the assignment to dateFormat with this:

dateFormatter.dateFormat = DateFormatter.dateFormat(fromTemplate: "h:mm a EEEE MMMM d", options: 0, locale: dateFormatter.locale)?.replacingOccurrences(of: "d", with: "'\(dayOrdinal)'")

Note the advice from several others that creating formatters is expensive, so you should cache and reuse them in code that is called frequently.