Convert string with unknown format (any format) to date

Question

I have data containing a date string.

Usually this would be in January. 3, 1966 ', but due to international differences this may not always be the case.

I need to read the data and convert it to a standard date string ("YYYY-MM-DD").

Basically this is what I have so far:

var dataString = 'Jan. 3, 1966' var dateFormatter = NSDateFormatter() dateFormatter.dateFormat = # I DON'T KNOW THE EXACT INPUT FORMAT ! let dateValue = dateFormatter.dateFromString(dataString) 

Answer 1

Xcode 9 • Swift 4 or Xcode 8.3.2 • Swift 3.1

You can use NSDataDetector as follows:

 extension String { var nsString: NSString { return self as NSString } var length: Int { return nsString.length } var nsRange: NSRange { return NSRange(location: 0, length: length) } var detectDates: [Date]? { return try? NSDataDetector(types: NSTextCheckingResult.CheckingType.date.rawValue) .matches(in: self, range: nsRange) .flatMap{$0.date} } } extension Collection where Iterator.Element == String { var dates: [Date] { return flatMap{$0.detectDates}.flatMap{$0} } } 

Testing:

 let dateStrings = ["January 3, 1966","Jan 3, 1966", "3 Jan 1966"] for dateString in dateStrings { if let dateDetected = dateString.detectDates?.first { print(dateDetected) // 1966-01-03 14:00:00 +0000 // 1966-01-03 14:00:00 +0000 // 1966-01-03 14:00:00 +0000 } } let dateStrings = ["January 3, 1966","Jan 3, 1966", "3 Jan 1966"] for date in dateStrings.dates { print(date) // 1966-01-03 14:00:00 +0000 // 1966-01-03 14:00:00 +0000 // 1966-01-03 14:00:00 +0000 } 

Answer 2

MKDataDetector is built on top of NSDataDetector - this way, you will abandon any implementation to accomplish this. It also extends String to provide convenient data discovery.