Member-only story
How to Format Dates and Times with SystemFormatStyle in SwiftUI
Learn to Build Accurate Counting-Up Timers in SwiftUI with Real-Time Updates
Apple has revolutionized time formatting in SwiftUI by introducing SystemFormatStyle, a flexible and powerful API for handling date, time, and interval-related formatting. It simplifies tasks like displaying relative time differences, precise offsets, or timers, enabling developers to focus on building rich user experiences.
This guide provides a deep dive into DateReference, DateOffset, Stopwatch, Timer, and TimeDataSource.
What is SystemFormatStyle?
SystemFormatStyle is a declarative way to render time-related data in SwiftUI. Its modularity allows for precise formatting while integrating with modern SwiftUI views, ensuring seamless localization and user-friendly displays.
Let’s explore each component with multiple practical examples.
1. DateReference: Natural Relative Time Formatting
The DateReference
style is designed to express relative differences between dates in the most natural way, like "3 days ago" or "Next year."