How to display date with human language like "Today at xx:xx pm", "Yesterday at xx:xx am"?

Question

I have a date "2014-07-02 20:57:38 +0000" and I want to format it as "Today at 8:57 pm". I want that if a string is yesterday, then display it as "Yesterday at 9:00 am". If it is neither today or yesterday, just show the actually date like "27/6 at 7:53 pm".

I was able to get the time with format like "8:57 AM" with the code below.

            var formatter : NSDateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
            formatter.dateFormat = "h:mm a"

            // message.createdAt is the date
            let dateString = formatter.stringFromDate(message.createdAt)
            println(dateString)

            //output = 8:57 AM

However, when I use the following code, it returns a blank string.

            var formatter : NSDateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
            formatter.dateFormat = "h:mm a"
            formatter.doesRelativeDateFormatting = true  //<-- This doesn't work

            let dateString = formatter.stringFromDate(message.createdAt)
            println(dateString)

            //output = (nothing, its a blank string)

How do I make this work and display "Today" or "Yesterday" in Swift?

Answer 1

The reason it's blank is that your date format only has time components. Combined with .doesRelativeDateFormatting that gives you the empty string. If you want that custom time format, I think you need separate formatters for the date and the time:

let now = NSDate()

let dateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
dateFormatter.dateStyle = .MediumStyle
dateFormatter.doesRelativeDateFormatting = true

let timeFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
timeFormatter.dateFormat = "h:mm a"

let time = "\(dateFormatter.stringFromDate(now)), \(timeFormatter.stringFromDate(now))"
println(time)      // prints "Today, 5:10 PM"