iphone - get NSDate today, yesterday, this Week, last Week, this Month, last Month... variables

Question

I am trying to do is to get NSDate today, yesterday, this Week, last Week, this Month, last Month variables ready for comparison for headers to be added on UITableView's titleForHeaderInSection

What I want is done manually in the code below for date 2009-12-11

 NSDate *today = [NSDate dateWithString:@"2009-12-11 00:00:00 +0000"];
 NSDate *yesterday = [NSDate dateWithString:@"2009-12-10 00:00:00 +0000"];
 NSDate *thisWeek = [NSDate dateWithString:@"2009-12-06 00:00:00 +0000"];
 NSDate *lastWeek = [NSDate dateWithString:@"2009-11-30 00:00:00 +0000"];
 NSDate *thisMonth = [NSDate dateWithString:@"2009-12-01 00:00:00 +0000"];
 NSDate *lastMonth = [NSDate dateWithString:@"2009-11-01 00:00:00 +0000"];

Answer 1

Adapted from the Date and Time Programming Guide:

// Right now, you can remove the seconds into the day if you want
NSDate *today = [NSDate date];

// All intervals taken from Google
NSDate *yesterday = [today dateByAddingTimeInterval: -86400.0];
NSDate *thisWeek  = [today dateByAddingTimeInterval: -604800.0];
NSDate *lastWeek  = [today dateByAddingTimeInterval: -1209600.0];

// To get the correct number of seconds in each month use NSCalendar
NSDate *thisMonth = [today dateByAddingTimeInterval: -2629743.83];
NSDate *lastMonth = [today dateByAddingTimeInterval: -5259487.66];

If you want the correct exact number of days depending on the month, you should use an NSCalendar.