Objective -C Date Formatter Examples - stringFromDate

The format specifiers are quite straightforward, Y = year, M = month, etc. Changing the number of specifiers for a field, changes the output. For example, MMMM generates the full month name “November”, MMM results in “Nov” and MM outputs “11″.
What follows is an example to create the following date string:
Saturday November 8, 2008:

NSDate *today = [NSDate date]; NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init]; [dateFormat setDateFormat:@"EEEE MMMM d, YYYY"]; NSString *dateString = [dateFormat stringFromDate:today]; [dateFormat release];

Here’s another example showing the current time

9:20 AM, PST: NSDate *today = [NSDate date]; NSDateFormatter *dateFormat = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init]; [dateFormat setDateFormat:@"h:mm a, zzz"]; NSString *dateString = [dateFormat stringFromDate:today]; [dateFormat release];

More details

http://iphonedevelopertips.com/cocoa/date-formatters-examples-take-2.html