How to Get an NSDate for a Specific Day of Week and Time from an Existing NSDate

DanMay 16, 2011May 16, 2011iPhone, ProgrammingiPhone Development, NSDate, NSDateComponents

Worst Post Title ever! This one took me a bit to figure out so I thought I’d post it in case anyone else out there had troubles. I wanted to get an NSDate for a specific day of the week and time from an existing NSDate object in order to create a countdown timer.

This example will get you the NSDate for the following Monday at 8am:

NSDate *today = [NSDate date];
NSCalendar *gregorian = [[NSCalendar alloc] initWithCalendarIdentifier:NSGregorianCalendar];
[gregorian setLocale:[NSLocale currentLocale]];

NSDateComponents *nowComponents = [gregorian components:NSYearCalendarUnit | NSWeekCalendarUnit | NSHourCalendarUnit | NSMinuteCalendarUnit | NSSecondCalendarUnit fromDate:today];

[nowComponents setWeekday:2]; //Monday
[nowComponents setWeek: [nowComponents week] + 1]; //Next week
[nowComponents setHour:8]; //8a.m.
[nowComponents setMinute:0];
[nowComponents setSecond:0];

NSDate *beginningOfWeek = [gregorian dateFromComponents:nowComponents];

Now that you have the new NSDate, you can calculate the difference between the two by using fromDate.

Published by Dan

Pokémon Trainer at Automattic, Inc. View more posts

7 thoughts on “How to Get an NSDate for a Specific Day of Week and Time from an Existing NSDate”

Dale Ingraham says:

May 16, 2011 at 5:33:12 PM

Thanks Dan,
I’ve been wondering how i can get a date for next monday (with Ann) and count down from today!?? I guess i have no idea what you are talking about but i’m sure in you tech world it means a lot to some.
I guess i’m more of a picture of castles kind of a guy.

See ya soon.

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1. Dan says:
  
  May 19, 2011 at 9:29:22 AM
  
  I will upload castle pictures soon 🙂
  
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Mark Allan says:

May 30, 2012 at 9:04:25 AM

Thanks very much for this. Of all things Objective-C, I find NSDate to be the most inscrutable! Have bookmarked this page for future reference. Many thanks.

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sdowding says:

March 21, 2013 at 10:17:40 AM

Thank you, this was very helpful. They key line i was missing is this:
[nowComponents setWeek: [nowComponents week] + 1]; //Next week

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beijingtee says:

April 18, 2013 at 5:24:26 AM

What if the users week is set to start on monday?
Does that not matter due to the “gregorian” calendar setting?

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1. Dan says:
  
  April 18, 2013 at 8:12:40 AM
  
  I think setting the locale will take into account the start of their week. I’m not completely certain though as I only needed to use this for users in the U.K.
  
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Pablo Ruan says:

March 17, 2015 at 7:48:22 PM

Thanks, Work perfect with swift

//Set Date and Hour at 00-00-00, 00:00
var hourStart = NSDateComponents()
var calendar = NSCalendar()
calendario.locale = NSLocale.currentLocale()
hourStart.day = 01
hourStart.month = 01
hourStart.year = 01
hourStart.hour = 00
hourStart.minute = 00
var dateCustom = calendar.dateFromComponents(hourStart)

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7 thoughts on “How to Get an NSDate for a Specific Day of Week and Time from an Existing NSDate”

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