FormatterKit
This library is no longer being maintained. Since its initial release in 2011, Apple has filled in many of the gaps FormatterKit was created to fill in Foundation and other SDK frameworks:
Deprecated FormatterKit API | Apple SDK API | Availability |
---|---|---|
TTTAddressFormatter |
CNPostalAddressFormatter |
iOS 9.0+ / macOS 10.11+ |
TTTArrayFormatter |
NSListFormatter |
iOS 13.0+ / macOS 10.15+ |
TTTNameFormatter |
NSPersonNameComponentsFormatter |
iOS 9.0+ / macOS 10.11+ |
TTTLocationFormatter |
NSMeasurementFormatter + NSUnitDistance / NSUnitAngle |
iOS 10.0+ / macOS 10.12+ |
TTTOrdinalNumberFormatter |
NSNumberFormatter + NSNumberFormatterOrdinalStyle |
iOS 9.0+ / macOS 10.11+ |
TTTTimeIntervalFormatter |
NSRelativeDateTimeFormatter |
iOS 13.0+ / macOS 10.15+ |
TTTUnitOfInformationFormatter |
NSMeasurementFormatter + NSUnitInformationStorage |
iOS 13.0+ / macOS 10.15+ |
You can continue to use FormatterKit in your projects, but we recommend switching to the corresponding Apple APIs as soon as it makes sense to do so.
Going forward, we plan to spin out non-deprecated formatters into their own repositories for future development as well as any new projects. This repository will remain archived here for compatibility with existing installations.
FormatterKit
is a collection of well-crafted NSFormatter
subclasses for things like units of information, distance, and relative time intervals. Each formatter abstracts away the complex business logic of their respective domain, so that you can focus on the more important aspects of your application.
In short, use this library if you're manually formatting any of the following (with string interpolation or the like):
- Addresses: Create formatted address strings from components (e.g. 221b Baker St / Paddington / Greater London / NW1 6XE / United Kingdom )
- Arrays: Display
NSArray
elements in a comma-delimited list (e.g. "Russell, Spinoza & Rawls") - Colors: RGB, CMYK, and HSL your ROY G. BIV in style. (e.g.
#BADF00D
,rgb(255, 100, 42)
) - Location, Distance & Direction: Show
CLLocationDistance
,CLLocationDirection
, andCLLocationSpeed
in metric or imperial units (eg. "240ft Northwest" / "45 km/h SE") - Names: Display personal names in the correct format, according to the current locale and source language (eg. "山田花子" for the Japanese first name "花子" (Hanako) and last name "山田" (Yamada))
- Ordinal Numbers: Convert cardinal
NSNumber
objects to their ordinal in most major languages (eg. "1st, 2nd, 3rd" / "1ère, 2ème, 3ème") - Time Intervals: Show relative time distance between any two
NSDate
objects (e.g. "3 minutes ago" / "yesterday") - Units of Information: Humanized representations of quantities of bits and bytes (e.g. "2.7 MB")
- URL Requests: Print out
cURL
orWget
command equivalents for anyNSURLRequest
(e.g.curl -X POST "https://www.example.com/" -H "Accept: text/html"
)
Installation
CocoaPods
You can install FormatterKit
via CocoaPods, by adding the following line to your Podfile
:
pod 'FormatterKit', '~> 1.9.0'
Run the pod install
command to download the library and integrate it into your Xcode project.
Carthage
To use FormatterKit
in your Xcode project using Carthage, specify it in Cartfile
:
github "FormatterKit/FormatterKit" ~> 1.9.0
Then run the carthage update
command to build the framework, and drag the built FormatterKit.framework into your Xcode project.
Demo
Build and run the FormatterKit Example
project in Xcode to see an inventory of the available FormatterKit
components.
TTTAddressFormatter
Address formats vary greatly across different regions. TTTAddressFormatter
ties into the Address Book frameworks to help your users find their place in the world.
For example, addresses in the United States take the form:
Street Address
City State ZIP
Country
Whereas addresses in Japan follow a different convention:
Postal Code
Prefecture Municipality
Street Address
Country
Requires that the
AddressBook
andAddressBookUI
frameworks are linked with#import
statements inPrefix.pch
.TTTAddressFormatter
isn't available on OS X.
Example Usage
TTTAddressFormatter *addressFormatter = [[TTTAddressFormatter alloc] init];
NSLog(@"%@", [addressFormatter stringFromAddressWithStreet:street locality:locality region:region postalCode:postalCode country:country]);
TTTArrayFormatter
Think of this as a production-ready alternative to NSArray -componentsJoinedByString:
. TTTArrayFormatter
comes with internationalization baked-in and provides a concise API that allows you to configure for any edge cases.
Example Usage
NSArray *list = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"Russel", @"Spinoza", @"Rawls", nil];
TTTArrayFormatter *arrayFormatter = [[TTTArrayFormatter alloc] init];
[arrayFormatter setUsesAbbreviatedConjunction:YES]; // Use '&' instead of 'and'
[arrayFormatter setUsesSerialDelimiter:NO]; // Omit Oxford Comma
NSLog(@"%@", [arrayFormatter stringFromArray:list]); // # => "Russell, Spinoza & Rawls"
TTTColorFormatter
RGB, CMYK, and HSL your ROY G. BIV in style. TTTColorFormatter
provides string representations of colors.
Example Usage
TTTColorFormatter *colorFormatter = [[TTTColorFormatter alloc] init];
NSString *RGB = [colorFormatter RGBStringFromColor:[UIColor orangeColor]];
TTTLocationFormatter
When working with CoreLocation
, you can use your favorite unit for distance... so long as your favorite unit is the meter. If you want to take distance calculations and display them to the user, you may want to use kilometers instead --- or maybe even miles if you're of the Imperial persuasion.
TTTLocationFormatter
gives you a lot of flexibility in the display of coordinates, distances, direction, speed, and velocity. Choose Metric or Imperial, cardinal directions, abbreviations, or degrees, and configure everything else (number of significant digits, etc.) with the associated NSNumberFormatter
.
Example Usage
TTTLocationFormatter *locationFormatter = [[TTTLocationFormatter alloc] init];
CLLocation *austin = [[CLLocation alloc] initWithLatitude:30.2669444 longitude:-97.7427778];
CLLocation *pittsburgh = [[CLLocation alloc] initWithLatitude:40.4405556 longitude:-79.9961111];
Distance in Metric Units with Cardinal Directions
NSLog(@"%@", [locationFormatter stringFromDistanceAndBearingFromLocation:pittsburgh toLocation:austin]);
// "2,000 km Southwest"
Distance in Imperial Units with Cardinal Direction Abbreviations
[locationFormatter.numberFormatter setMaximumSignificantDigits:4];
[locationFormatter setBearingStyle:TTTBearingAbbreviationWordStyle];
[locationFormatter setUnitSystem:TTTImperialSystem];
NSLog(@"%@", [locationFormatter stringFromDistanceAndBearingFromLocation:pittsburgh toLocation:austin]);
// "1,218 miles SW"
Speed in Imperial Units with Bearing in Degrees
[locationFormatter setBearingStyle:TTTBearingNumericStyle];
NSLog(@"%@ at %@", [locationFormatter stringFromSpeed:25],[locationFormatter stringFromBearingFromLocation:pittsburgh toLocation:austin]);
// "25 mph at 310°"
Coordinates
[locationFormatter.numberFormatter setUsesSignificantDigits:NO];
NSLog(@"%@", [locationFormatter stringFromLocation:austin]);
// (30.2669444, -97.7427778)
TTTNameFormatter
TTTNameFormatter
formats names according to the internationalization standards of the AddressBook framework, which determine, for example, the display order of names and whether or not to delimit components with whitespace.
TTTNameFormatter
isn't available on OS X.
Example Usage
TTTNameFormatter *nameFormatter = [[TTTNameFormatter alloc] init];
NSString *frenchName = [nameFormatter stringFromPrefix:nil firstName:@"Guillaume" middleName:@"François" lastName:@"Antoine" suffix:@"Marquis de l'Hôpital"];
NSLog(@"%@", frenchName);
// "Guillaume François Antoine Marquis de l'Hôpital"
NSString *japaneseName = [nameFormatter stringFromFirstName:@"孝和" lastName:@"関"];
NSLog(@"%@", japaneseName);
// "関孝和"
TTTOrdinalNumberFormatter
NSNumberFormatter
is great for Cardinal numbers (17, 42, 69, etc.), but it doesn't have built-in support for Ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.)
A naïve implementation might be as simple as throwing the one's place in a switch statement and appending "-st", "-nd", etc. But what if you want to support French, which appends "-er", "-ère", and "-eme" in various contexts? How about Spanish? Japanese?
TTTOrdinalNumberFormatter
supports English, Spanish, French, German, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Swedish. For other languages, you can use the standard default, or override it with your own. For languages whose ordinal indicator depends upon the grammatical properties of the predicate, TTTOrdinalNumberFormatter
can format according to a specified gender and/or plurality.
Example Usage
TTTOrdinalNumberFormatter *ordinalNumberFormatter = [[TTTOrdinalNumberFormatter alloc] init];
[ordinalNumberFormatter setLocale:[NSLocale currentLocale]];
[ordinalNumberFormatter setGrammaticalGender:TTTOrdinalNumberFormatterMaleGender];
NSNumber *number = [NSNumber numberWithInteger:2];
NSLog(@"%@", [NSString stringWithFormat:NSLocalizedString(@"You came in %@ place!", nil), [ordinalNumberFormatter stringFromNumber:number]]);
Assuming you've provided localized strings for "You came in %@ place!", the output would be:
- English: "You came in 2nd place!"
- French: "Vous êtes arrivé à la 2e place !"
- Spanish: "Usted llegó en 2.o lugar!"
TTTTimeIntervalFormatter
Nearly every application works with time in some way or another. And when we display temporal information to users, it's typically in relative terms to the present, like "3 minutes ago", "10 months ago", or "last month". TTTTimeIntervalFormatter
defaults to a smart, relative display of an NSTimeInterval
value, with options to extend that behavior to your particular use case.
Example Usage
TTTTimeIntervalFormatter *timeIntervalFormatter = [[TTTTimeIntervalFormatter alloc] init];
[timeIntervalFormatter stringForTimeInterval:0]; // "just now"
[timeIntervalFormatter stringForTimeInterval:-100]; // "1 minute ago"
[timeIntervalFormatter stringForTimeInterval:-8000]; // "2 hours ago"
// Turn idiomatic deictic expressions on / off
[timeIntervalFormatter stringForTimeInterval:-100000]; // "1 day ago"
[timeIntervalFormatter setUsesIdiomaticDeicticExpressions:YES];
[timeIntervalFormatter stringForTimeInterval:-100000]; // "yesterday"
// Customize the present tense deictic expression for
[timeIntervalFormatter setPresentDeicticExpression:@"seconds ago"];
[timeIntervalFormatter stringForTimeInterval:0]; // "seconds ago"
// Expand the time interval for present tense
[timeIntervalFormatter stringForTimeInterval:-3]; // "3 seconds ago"
[timeIntervalFormatter setPresentTimeIntervalMargin:10];
[timeIntervalFormatter stringForTimeInterval:-3]; // "seconds ago"
TTTUnitOfInformationFormatter
No matter how far abstracted from its underlying hardware an application may be, there comes a day when it has to communicate the size of a file to the user. TTTUnitOfInformationFormatter
transforms a number of bits or bytes into a humanized representation, using either SI decimal or IEC binary unit prefixes.
Example Usage
TTTUnitOfInformationFormatter *unitOfInformationFormatter = [[TTTUnitOfInformationFormatter alloc] init];
[unitOfInformationFormatter stringFromNumberOfBits:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:416]]; // "56 bytes"
// Display in either bits or bytes
[unitOfInformationFormatter setDisplaysInTermsOfBytes:NO];
[unitOfInformationFormatter stringFromNumberOfBits:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:416]]; // "416 bits"
// Use IEC Binary prefixes (base 2 rather than SI base 10; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60027)
[unitOfInformationFormatter setUsesIECBinaryPrefixesForCalculation:NO];
[unitOfInformationFormatter stringFromNumberOfBits:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:8660]]; // "8.66 Kbit"
[unitOfInformationFormatter setUsesIECBinaryPrefixesForCalculation:YES];
[unitOfInformationFormatter setUsesIECBinaryPrefixesForDisplay:YES];
[unitOfInformationFormatter stringFromNumberOfBits:[NSNumber numberWithInteger:416]]; // "8.46 Kibit"
TTTURLRequestFormatter
NSURLRequest
objects encapsulate all of the information made in a network request, including url, headers, body, etc. This isn't something you'd normally want to show to a user, but it'd be nice to have a way to make it more portable for debugging. Enter: TTTURLRequestFormatter
. In addition to formatting requests simply as POST http://www.example.com/
, it also generates cURL
and Wget
commands with all of its headers and data fields intact to debug in the console.
Example Usage
NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.example.com/"]];
[request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
[request addValue:@"text/html" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Accept"];
[TTTURLRequestFormatter cURLCommandFromURLRequest:request];
curl -X POST "https://www.example.com/" -H "Accept: text/html"
Localizations
FormatterKit comes fully internationalized, with .strings
files for the following locales:
- Catalan (
ca
) - Chinese (Simplified) (
zh_Hans
) - Chinese (Traditional) (
zh_Hant
) - Czech (
cs
) - Danish (
da
) - Dutch (
nl
) - English (
en
) - French (
fr
) - German (
de
) - Greek (
el
) - Hebrew (
he
) - Hungarian (
hu
) - Indonesian (
id
) - Italian (
it
) - Korean (
ko
) - Norwegian Bokmål (
nb
) - Norwegian Nynorsk (
nn
) - Polish (
pl
) - Portuguese (Brazilian) (
pt_BR
) - Russian (
ru
) - Spanish (
es
) - Swedish (
sv
) - Turkish (
tr
) - Ukranian (
uk
) - Vietnamese (
vi
)
License
FormatterKit is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.