from string to Nsdate Swift - swift

Question

I get date from MySql database in this form:
dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss
for example : 19/09/2015 14:39:18
I want convert this string in NSDate object in Swift , and for this reason I did like this:
var d = "19/09/2015 14:39:18"
var form : NSDateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
form.dateFormat = "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss"
print(form.dateFromString(d)!)
but I get by last print this:
2015-09-19 12:39:18 +0000
What's wrong?

Answer 1

You need to tell your NSDateFormatter that the incoming date strings are formatted for the GMT time zone:
var d = "19/09/2015 14:39:18"
var form : NSDateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
form.timeZone = NSTimeZone(name: "GMT")
form.dateFormat = "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss"
print(form.dateFromString(d)!)
Prints:
"2015-09-19 14:39:18 +0000"
If you omit manually setting the timeZone property, the NSDateFormatter will inherit the current system time zone, and parse it as if it were a local format time. Then when you're printing the new NSDate object, it's being displayed in GMT, which results in the offset.
Edit: Once you have your NSDate object, you can then use the same formatter to go back to a string representation with the same format:
var d = "19/09/2015 14:39:18"
var form : NSDateFormatter = NSDateFormatter()
form.timeZone = NSTimeZone(name: "GMT")
form.dateFormat = "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss"
form.stringFromDate(form.dateFromString(d)!) // "19/09/2015 14:39:18"