How to Add Custom Text in Nsdateformatter's Format String

Is it possible to add custom text in NSDateFormatter's format string?

You can insert arbitrary text (enclosed in single quotes) in the date format, for example.

NSDateFormatter *fmt = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[fmt setDateFormat:@"dd' in the month of 'MMMM' in the year of 'yyyy"];
NSString *s = [fmt stringFromDate:[NSDate date]];

Result:

09 in the month of July in the year of 2013

How can I write a custom Date Format with string into it?

You have to wrap it into quotes ', e.g.

"dd 'de' MMMM, yyyy"

From Date Format Patterns:

Literal text, which is output as-is when formatting, and must closely match when parsing. Literal text can include:

• Any characters other than A..Z and a..z, including spaces and punctuation.
• Any text between single vertical quotes ('xxxx'), which may include A..Z and a..z as literal text.

You can also let the formatter generate the de:

let locale = Locale(identifier: "pt-BR")
let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()

let dayFormat = DateFormatter.dateFormat(fromTemplate: "d MMMM", options: 0, locale: locale)!

dateFormatter.dateFormat = dayFormat + ", yyyy"
dateFormatter.locale = locale

print(dateFormatter.string(from: Date())) // 7 de junho, 2017

NSDateFormatter with custom string inbetween

Your format could be something like

M/dd/yyyy' at 'hh:mm a

3/24/2016 at 12:00 AM

You can check this link for further details.

Format String Output String
M/d/y 11/4/2012
MM/dd/yy 11/04/12
MMM d, ''yy Nov 4, '12
MMMM November
E Sun
EEEE Sunday
'Week' w 'of 52' Week 45 of 52
'Day' D 'of 365' Day 309 of 365
QQQ Q4
QQQQ 4th quarter
m 'minutes past' h 9 minutes past 8
h:mm a 8:09 PM
HH:mm:ss's' 20:09:00s
HH:mm:ss:SS 20:09:00:00
h:mm a zz 8:09 PM CST
h:mm a zzzz 8:09 PM Central Standard Time
yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss Z 2012-11-04 20:09:00 -0600

You can combine any of the options as per your requirements.

How to add characters into dateFormatter

Add single quotes

xFormatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss-04:00"

From the documentation:

... This includes the need to enclose ASCII letters in single quotes if they are intended to represent literal text.

Source: Unicode.org: Date Format Patterns

Edit:

Be aware that the time zone is just an amendment to the string, it's not considered by the date formatter.

To consider the time zone you have to set the timeZone of the formatter

xFormatter.timeZone = TimeZone(secondsFromGMT: -14400)

In iOS 10.0+ and macOS 10.12+ there is a more convenient way to create an ISO8601 string

let isoFormatter = ISO8601DateFormatter()
isoFormatter.timeZone = TimeZone(secondsFromGMT: -14400)
isoFormatter.formatOptions = .withInternetDateTime
print(isoFormatter.string(from: Date()))

NSDateFormatter formats hours in range out of 0-24 with some international settings

Based on comment of rmaddy and Rob the right solution in this situation is to specify "en_US_POSIX" locale for all formatters involved in serialisation NSDate objects.

So snipped posted in question part should be:

#define DATE_FORMAT "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ"
formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
formatter.dateFormat = @DATE_FORMAT;

formatter.locale = [NSLocale localeWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US_POSIX"];

return [formatter stringFromDate:value];

For everybody who have same issue link posted by Rob would be extremely useful.
See Technical Q&A 1480. I would recommend you to read it before applying this solution to your code.

Date Format in Swift

You have to declare 2 different NSDateFormatters, the first to convert the string to a NSDate and the second to print the date in your format.

Try this code:

let dateFormatterGet = NSDateFormatter()
dateFormatterGet.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"

let dateFormatterPrint = NSDateFormatter()
dateFormatterPrint.dateFormat = "MMM dd,yyyy"

let date: NSDate? = dateFormatterGet.dateFromString("2016-02-29 12:24:26")
print(dateFormatterPrint.stringFromDate(date!))

Swift 3 and higher:

From Swift 3 NSDate class has been changed to Date and NSDateFormatter to DateFormatter.

let dateFormatterGet = DateFormatter()
dateFormatterGet.dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"

let dateFormatterPrint = DateFormatter()
dateFormatterPrint.dateFormat = "MMM dd,yyyy"

if let date = dateFormatterGet.date(from: "2016-02-29 12:24:26") {
    print(dateFormatterPrint.string(from: date))
} else {
   print("There was an error decoding the string")
}

Escape NSDateFormatter String

You can escape text by enclosing it in single quotes:

[dateFormater setDateFormat:@"dd/MM/yyyy 'at' HH:mm"];

From the docs:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init]; 
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd 'at' HH:mm"];   
NSDate *date = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceReferenceDate:162000];   
NSString *formattedDateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date];   
NSLog(@"formattedDateString: %@", formattedDateString); 
// For US English, the output may be: 
// formattedDateString: 2001-01-02 at 13:00

Set Formatted NSDate in UILabel text

Check my answer to this question, you will get all the info you need here:

Date formatter for the google calender API

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