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

Dan iPhone, Programming May 16, 2011May 16, 2011 1 Minute

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 all posts by Dan

Published May 16, 2011May 16, 2011

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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