Sort array with string dates Objective C

Question

I have an NSMutableArray of Strings. The Strings in the array, are converted from dates to Strings and I need to sort them and show them in a tableview.

I need:

June 24, 2011 June 26, 2011 July 1, 2011

And so on.

I know questions similar to this have been asked, but I didn´t get it to work. So I would really appreciate if someone could help me!

Answer 1

Sort them while they're still dates, keep them as a sorted list of dates, and only format them as text as needed for display (i.e., during -tableView:cellForIndexPath:).

Alternatively, the ISO 8601 date formats (an example formatted date would be 20110603T1345.123-4) mostly sort lexicographically the same as they would as dates. Times in different time zones or that cross a summer time shift can invalidate this property, though, so leaving dates as dates would still be your best bet.

Answer 2

Easy way to do this is to create a function of the form

NSInteger funcName(id left, id right, void* extra);

you can then use NSMutableArray's sortUsingFunction:context: passing your comparison function in. Jeremy is correct in stating that dates are easier to sort, they have built in comparison functions:

– isEqualToDate:
– earlierDate:
– laterDate:
– compare:

See NSMutableArray for sorting information and NSDate for its comparison methods

Answer 3

Your NSMuatbleArray must have the NSDate object.

First you need to sort the array using -[NSMutableArray sortUsingSelector:] and need to pass @selector(compare:).

The compare: function of NSDate will do the job for you and sort the array in ascending order ..

After following the above you just need to call reloadData function of UITableView.