Date.FormatStyle

· 3 min read

This is part of the FormatStyle Deep Dive series

Apple provides a convenience .formatted method on Date objects that allows you to customize the date and time styling within a few fixed enum values.

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DateStyle & TimeStyle

The fixed enum vales available are:

.formatted(date: Date.FormatStyle.DateStyle, time: Date.FormatStyle.TimeStyle)

DateStyle (Apple Documentation)

TimeStyle (Apple Documentation)

You can mix and match the DateStyle and TimeStyle in any way that you’d like:

let twosdayDateComponents = DateComponents(
    year: 2022,
    month: 2,
    day: 22,
    hour: 2,
    minute: 22,
    second: 22,
    nanosecond: 22
)
let twosday = Calendar(identifier: .gregorian).date(from: twosdayDateComponents)!

// MARK: DateStyle
twosday.formatted(date: .abbreviated, time: .omitted)   // "Feb 22, 2022"
twosday.formatted(date: .complete, time: .omitted)      // "Tuesday, February 22, 2022"
twosday.formatted(date: .long, time: .omitted)          // "February 22, 2022"
twosday.formatted(date: .numeric, time: .omitted)       // "2/22/2022"

// MARK: TimeStyle
twosday.formatted(date: .omitted, time: .complete)      // "2:22:22 AM MST"
twosday.formatted(date: .omitted, time: .shortened)     // "2:22 AM"
twosday.formatted(date: .omitted, time: .standard)      // "2:22:22 AM"

// MARK: - DateStyle & TimeStyle
twosday.formatted(date: .abbreviated, time: .complete)  // "Feb 22, 2022, 2:22:22 AM MST"
twosday.formatted(date: .abbreviated, time: .shortened) // "Feb 22, 2022, 2:22 AM"
twosday.formatted(date: .abbreviated, time: .standard)  // "Feb 22, 2022, 2:22:22 AM"
twosday.formatted(date: .complete, time: .complete)     // "Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 2:22:22 AM MST"
twosday.formatted(date: .complete, time: .shortened)    // "Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 2:22 AM"
twosday.formatted(date: .complete, time: .standard)     // "Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 2:22:22 AM"
twosday.formatted(date: .long, time: .complete)         // "February 22, 2022, 2:22:22 AM MST"
twosday.formatted(date: .long, time: .shortened)        // "February 22, 2022, 2:22 AM"
twosday.formatted(date: .long, time: .standard)         // "February 22, 2022, 2:22:22 AM"
twosday.formatted(date: .numeric, time: .complete)      // "2/22/2022, 2:22:22 AM MST"
twosday.formatted(date: .numeric, time: .shortened)     // "2/22/2022, 2:22 AM"
twosday.formatted(date: .numeric, time: .standard)      // "2/22/2022, 2:22:22 AM"

Note: There’s no option to call the .locale() method here, as this convenience method was added to the Date object, and isn’t using a FormatStyle instance. To customize the Locale, see below.

Using Date.FormatStyle Directly

In order to customize the locale, calendar, time zone, and capitalization of the String output. You can initialize and store an instance of the Date.FormatStyle struct:

let twosdayDateComponents = DateComponents(
    year: 2022,
    month: 2,
    day: 22,
    hour: 2,
    minute: 22,
    second: 22,
    nanosecond: 22
)
let frenchHebrew = Date.FormatStyle(
    date: .complete,
    time: .complete,
    locale: Locale(identifier: "fr_FR"),
    calendar: Calendar(identifier: .hebrew),
    timeZone: TimeZone(secondsFromGMT: 0)!,
    capitalizationContext: .standalone
)

twosday.formatted(frenchHebrew) // "Mardi 22 février 2022 ap. J.-C. 9:22:22 UTC"
frenchHebrew.format(twosday) // "Mardi 22 février 2022 ap. J.-C. 9:22:22 UTC"

You can either pass this new custom style into the .formatted() method on the date object OR pass the date object into the style using the .format() method.

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See the examples as a gist

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