How to unit test Date in Swift - swift

Question

If I have ArticleItem struct like this:
public struct ArticleItem: Equatable {
public let id: UUID
public let description: String?
public let location: String?
public let thumbnailURL: URL
public let created: Date
public init(id: UUID, description: String?, location: String?, thumbnailURL: URL, created: Date) {
self.id = id
self.description = description
self.location = location
self.thumbnailURL = thumbnailURL
self.created = created
}
}
But from back-end we would receive such info:
{
"id": "a UUID",
"description": "a description",
"location": "a location",
"image": "https://a-image.url",
"created_date": "2020-05-09",
}
How can I test the correctness of Date ?
In the test I have something like this:
func test_load_deliversItemsOn200HTTPResponseWithJSONItems(){
let (sut, client) = makeSUT()
let item1 = ArticleItem(id: UUID(), description: nil, location: nil, thumbnailURL: URL(string: "http://a-url.com/")!, created: Date())
let item1JSON = [
"id": item1.id.uuidString,
"image": item1.imageURL.absoluteString,
"created_date": ??? // what should be here
]
let items = [
"items": [item1JSON]
]
expect(sut: sut, toCompleteWithResult: .success([item1])) {
let itemsJSON = try! JSONSerialization.data(withJSONObject: items)
client.complete(withStatusCode: 200, data: itemsJSON)
}
}
I've heard about using iso8601 when decoding but still don't know how to do it.
Please help me. Thanks

Answer 1

You need to tell the decoder what dateDecoderStrategy your model or json follows.
let decoder = JSONDecoder()
decoder.dateDecodingStrategy = .formatted(TheFormatThatTheDateHas)
and then
decoder.decode........
for the format, google the date plus with format.