NSDateFormatter "Month" in 3 letters instead of full word

Question

    NSDateFormatter* formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
    [formatter setDateFormat:@"dd-MM-YYYY HH:mm"];        
    [formatter setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone systemTimeZone]];

If i choose MM i get the month in number: 09-05-2012 15:33 If i choose MMMM i get the month in word: 09-May-2012 15:33

What i wanted, was the month in 3 letters abbreviation.
Eg: January would be Jan

In this case May is correct because it only has 3 letters.

Solution 1

Have you tried: [formatter setDateFormat:@"dd-MMM-YYYY HH:mm"]; and then [formatter stringFromDate:someNSDate];

Solution 2

IF you get the two things in the wrong order, you don't get the expected output.

[formatter setDateFormat:@"MMM"];
[formatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterMediumStyle];

does NOT give the same results as:

[formatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterMediumStyle];
[formatter setDateFormat:@"MMM"];

(The second of these two snippets is now happily handing out Sep Oct etc in my app)

Solution 3

In SWIFT

let dateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()

dateFormatter.dateFormat = "dd MMM yyyy HH:mm"

dateFormatter.stringFromDate(NSDate())

Solution 4

This is a stripped down solution that works with Swift 4 in producing a 3 letter month output:

let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
dateFormatter.dateFormat = "dd MMM YYYY, HH:mm:ss"

And to verify:

print(dateFormatter.string(from: Date())) // 20 Mar 2018, 23:41:40

As previously noted, MMM is the correct syntax for getting the desired month output.

Solution 5

for swift 4 go with:

if let dateFormatter = DateFormatter(){
    dateFormatter.dateStyle = .medium
    // eventually:
    //let locale = Locale(identifier: ...                       
    //dateFormatter!.locale = locale
    dateFormatter.dateStyle = .medium
    dateFormatter!.dateFormat = "dd MMM YYYY, HH:mm:ss"
 } else..
        ..

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