NSDateFormatter milliseconds bug

Question

I want to create a NSDateFormatter that should parse dates like this "2014-05-13 23:31:41.374577". So:

NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
formatter.dateFormat = @"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSSSSS";
NSString *dateString = @"2014-05-13 23:31:41.374577";
NSDate *date = [formatter dateFromString:dateString];
NSString *anotherDateString = [formatter stringFromDate:date];

However, the anotherDateString is 2014-05-13 23:31:41.374000. Why does it truncate the milliseconds?

Answer 1

It seems that NSDateFormatter works only with millisecond resolution, for the following reasons:

• By setting a breakpoint in CFDateFormatterCreateDateFromString, one can see that this function is called from dateFromString::

  (lldb) bt
  * thread #1: tid = 0x26d03f, 0x018f47d0 CoreFoundation`CFDateFormatterCreateDateFromString, queue = 'com.apple.main-thread', stop reason = breakpoint 3.1
      frame #0: 0x018f47d0 CoreFoundation`CFDateFormatterCreateDateFromString
      frame #1: 0x0116e0ea Foundation`getObjectValue + 248
      frame #2: 0x0116dfc7 Foundation`-[NSDateFormatter getObjectValue:forString:errorDescription:] + 206
      frame #3: 0x0116879f Foundation`-[NSDateFormatter dateFromString:] + 71
    * frame #4: 0x00002d56 foo`main(argc=1, argv=0xbfffee54) + 182 at main.mm:25
  

• CFDateFormatterCreateDateFromString() is from CFDateFormatter.c which is open source. One can see that all calendrical calculations are made using the ICU Calendar Classes.

• It is stated in calendar.h that Calendar uses UDate which has a millisecond resolution:

  /**
   * <code>Calendar</code> is an abstract base class for converting between
   * a <code>UDate</code> object and a set of integer fields such as
   * <code>YEAR</code>, <code>MONTH</code>, <code>DAY</code>, <code>HOUR</code>,
   * and so on. (A <code>UDate</code> object represents a specific instant in
   * time with millisecond precision. See UDate
   * for information about the <code>UDate</code> class.)
   * ...