NSDateFormatter ignores the AppleLanguages in NSUserDefaults

2
votes

My App is translated into several languages, but for now I want to force the language to Dutch. I did force the language to Dutch by setting the AppleLanguages key in the standardUserDefaults to Dutch. This is working for localized strings and xib files.

But the NSDateFormatter seems to ignore this value completely. It's just using the iPhones en_US locale to format the date, even if I set the locale myself on the NSDateFormatter object:

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
NSLocale *dutch = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"nl_NL"];
[dateFormatter setLocale:dutch];
[dutch release];
[dateFormatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterLongStyle];
dateLabel.text = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:[BabyInfo getDate]];
[dateFormatter release];

Does anyone have a clue how to solve this?

Update: So it seems the all the date stuff (like NSDateFormatter and NSDatePicker) are not using the language locale to determine what type of date to show, but are looking at the location locale. Still, I don't know how to tell the formatter and picker that I want them to show their dates in Dutch. So any help is still welcome, but at least I now understand what the problem is.

2
iphoneobjective-clocalization

2 Answers

2
votes

Maybe this answer comes too late but check this out:

http://www.alexcurylo.com/blog/2011/02/16/tip-nsdateformatter-localization/

This will force the Formatter/Picker to use the locale with the preferred language without having to change your iPhone/iPad settings.

2
votes

To use the selected language for your date formatter use:

[dateFormatter setLocale:[[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:[[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0]]];