The date with which to compare the
receiver. This value must not be nil.
If the value is nil, the behavior is
undefined and may change in future
versions of Mac OS X.
Return Value
If:
The receiver and anotherDate are
exactly equal to each other,
NSOrderedSame
The receiver is later in
time than anotherDate,
NSOrderedDescending
The receiver is
earlier in time than anotherDate,
NSOrderedAscending
In other words:
if ([date1 compare:date2] == NSOrderedSame) ...
Note that it might be easier in your particular case to read and write this :
I don't know exactly if you have asked this but if you only want to compare the date component of a NSDate you have to use NSCalendar and NSDateComponents to remove the time component.
Something like this should work as a category for NSDate:
NSDate actually represents a time interval in seconds since a reference date (1st Jan 2000 UTC I think). Internally, a double precision floating point number is used so two arbitrary dates are highly unlikely to compare equal even if they are on the same day. If you want to see if a particular date falls on a particular day, you probably need to use NSDateComponents. e.g.
NSDateComponents* dateComponents = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init];
[dateComponents setYear: 2011];
[dateComponents setMonth: 5];
[dateComponents setDay: 24];
/*
* Construct two dates that bracket the day you are checking.
* Use the user's current calendar. I think this takes care of things like daylight saving time.
*/
NSCalendar* calendar = [NSCalendar currentCalendar];
NSDate* startOfDate = [calendar dateFromComponents: dateComponents];
NSDateComponents* oneDay = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init];
[oneDay setDay: 1];
NSDate* endOfDate = [calendar dateByAddingComponents: oneDay toDate: startOfDate options: 0];
/*
* Compare the date with the start of the day and the end of the day.
*/
NSComparisonResult startCompare = [startOfDate compare: myDate];
NSComparisonResult endCompare = [endOfDate compare: myDate];
if (startCompare != NSOrderedDescending && endCompare == NSOrderedDescending)
{
// we are on the right date
}
You can change it to difference between hours also.
If you want to compare date with format of dd/MM/yyyy only, you need to add below lines between NSDate* currentdate = [NSDate date]; && NSTimeInterval distance
Check the following Function for date comparison first of all create two NSDate objects and pass to the function:
Add the bellow lines of code in viewDidload or according to your scenario.
-(BOOL)dateComparision:(NSDate*)date1 andDate2:(NSDate*)date2{
BOOL isTokonValid;
if ([date1 compare:date2] == NSOrderedDescending) {
//"date1 is later than date2
isTokonValid = YES;
} else if ([date1 compare:date2] == NSOrderedAscending) {
//date1 is earlier than date2
isTokonValid = NO;
} else {
//dates are the same
isTokonValid = NO;
}
return isTokonValid;}