How do I get hour and minutes from NSDate?

In my application I need to get the hour and minute separately:

NSString *currentHour=[string1 substringWithRange: NSMakeRange(0,2)];
		int currentHourInNumber=[currentHour intValue];

Consider string1 contains 11:59:13 AM which is coming from datepicker.

Here if I use above code, it's okay to get hour if it's greater than 9. Else I need to change NSMakeRange(0,1) to get hour between 1 to 9.

Are there any methods to get the hour, minutes, etc?

Thanks in advance, please provide me sample code.

Use an NSDateFormatter to convert string1 into an NSDate, then get the required NSDateComponents:

Obj-C:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"<your date format goes here"];
NSDate *date = [dateFormatter dateFromString:string1];
NSCalendar *calendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
NSDateComponents *components = [calendar components:(NSCalendarUnitHour | NSCalendarUnitMinute) fromDate:date];
NSInteger hour = [components hour];
NSInteger minute = [components minute];

Swift 1 and 2:

let dateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
dateFormatter.dateFormat = "Your date Format"
let date = dateFormatter.dateFromString(string1)
let calendar = NSCalendar.currentCalendar()
let comp = calendar.components([.Hour, .Minute], fromDate: date)
let hour = comp.hour
let minute = comp.minute

Swift 3:

let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
dateFormatter.dateFormat = "Your date Format"
let date = dateFormatter.date(from: string1)
let calendar = Calendar.current
let comp = calendar.dateComponents([.hour, .minute], from: date)
let hour = comp.hour
let minute = comp.minute

More about the dateformat is on the official unicode site

If you only need it for presenting as a string the following code is much easier

NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[formatter setDateFormat:@"HH:mm"];

NSString *startTimeString = [formatter stringFromDate:startTimePicker.date];

This seems to me to be what the question is after, no need for formatters:

NSDate *date = [NSDate date];
NSCalendar *calendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
NSDateComponents *components = [calendar components:(NSCalendarUnitHour | NSCalendarUnitMinute) fromDate:date];
NSInteger hour = [components hour];
NSInteger minute = [components minute];

NSDateComponents

All you need can be found here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/DatesAndTimes/Articles/dtCalendars.html

If you were to use the C library then this could be done:

time_t t;
struct tm * timeinfo;

time (&t);
timeinfo = localtime (&t);

NSLog(@"Hour: %d Minutes: %d", timeinfo->tm_hour, timeinfo->tm_min);

And using Swift:

var t = time_t()
time(&t)
let x = localtime(&t)

println("Hour: \(x.memory.tm_hour) Minutes: \(x.memory.tm_min)")

For further guidance see: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/ctime/localtime/

With iOS 8, Apple introduced a helper method to retrieve the hour, minute, second and nanosecond from an NSDate object.

Objective-C

NSDate *date = [NSDate currentDate];
NSInteger hour = 0;
NSInteger minute = 0;
NSCalendar *currentCalendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
[currentCalendar getHour:&hour minute:&minute second:NULL nanosecond:NULL fromDate:date];
NSLog(@"the hour is %ld and minute is %ld", (long)hour, (long)minute);

Swift

let date = NSDate()
var hour = 0
var minute = 0
let calendar = NSCalendar.currentCalendar()
if #available(iOS 8.0, *) {
    calendar.getHour(&hour, minute: &minute, second: nil, nanosecond: nil, fromDate: date)
    print("the hour is \(hour) and minute is \(minute)")
}

Swift 2.0

You can do following thing to get hours and minute from a date :

let dateFromat = NSDateFormatter()
dateFromat.dateFormat = "hh:mm a"
let date = dateFromat.dateFromString(string1) // In your case its string1
print(date) // you will get - 11:59 AM

Swift 2.0

    let dateNow = NSDate()
    let calendar = NSCalendar.currentCalendar()
    let hour = calendar.component(NSCalendarUnit.Hour, fromDate: dateNow)
    let minute = calendar.component(NSCalendarUnit.Minute, fromDate: dateNow)
    print(String(hour))
    print(String(minute))

Please do take note of the cast to String in the print statement, you can easily assign that value to variables, like this:

var hoursString = String(hour)
var minutesString = String(minute)

Then you can concatenate values like this:

var compoundString = "\(hour):\(minute)"
print(compoundString)

Here's an extension on NSDate

    @interface NSDate (KTelDateUtility)

-(NSUInteger)dateYear;
-(NSUInteger)dateMonth;
-(NSUInteger)dateDay;

-(NSUInteger)dateHours;
-(NSUInteger)dateMins;
-(NSUInteger)dateSeconds;

@end

    @implementation NSDate (KTelDateUtility)

-(NSDateComponents*)dateCalenderComponents {
    NSDateComponents* dateComponents = [[NSCalendar currentCalendar] components:NSCalendarUnitDay | NSCalendarUnitMonth | NSCalendarUnitYear fromDate:self];
    return dateComponents;
}

-(NSDateComponents*)dateTimeComponents {
    NSDateComponents* timeComponents = [[NSCalendar currentCalendar] components:NSCalendarUnitHour | NSCalendarUnitMinute | NSCalendarUnitSecond fromDate:self];
    return timeComponents;
}

-(NSUInteger)dateYear {
    return [[self dateCalenderComponents] year];
}

-(NSUInteger)dateMonth {
    return [[self dateCalenderComponents] month];
}

-(NSUInteger)dateDay {
    return [[self dateCalenderComponents] day];
}

-(NSUInteger)dateHours {
    return [[self dateTimeComponents] hour];
}

-(NSUInteger)dateMins {
    return [[self dateTimeComponents] minute];
}

-(NSUInteger)dateSeconds {
    return [[self dateTimeComponents] second];
}


@end