Swift make NSDate from string not working as expec

Question

I'm trying to convert a date string into a NSDate. I have this input date string 2014-10-09 17:57 and this timezone +4 or Asia/Dubai and for some reason, i get this NSDate after i execute the code below 2014-10-09 13:57:00 +0000.

let dateString = "2014-10-09 17:57"
let formatter = NSDateFormatter()
formatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"
formatter.timeZone = NSTimeZone(name: "Asia/Dubai")
println("\(formatter.dateFromString(dateString))")

I want to get a date like this 2014-10-09 17:57 +0400. What am i doing wrong? Can you help me figure it out? I need the date to make some calculations between this one and another one which is correctly formatted with timezone.

Answer 1

It helps to breakup compound statements. The result of the formatter is a date, seconds since the reference date (GMT), it has no concept of a format or timezone.

The println() displays the date based ion the default formatting of there description method.

If you want it display in a particular way use a date formatter to create the desired string representation.

Example:

let dateString = "2014-10-09 17:57"
let formatter = NSDateFormatter()
formatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"
formatter.timeZone = NSTimeZone(name: "Asia/Dubai")
let date = formatter.dateFromString(dateString)
println("date: \(date!)") // date: 2014-10-09 13:57:00 +0000

formatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm Z"
let formattedDateString = formatter.stringFromDate(date!)
println("formattedDateString: \(formattedDateString)") // formattedDateString: 2014-10-09 17:57 +0400