Map time with RestKit - json

Question

I've iOS project which is using RestKit 0.21.0 component responsible to get, parse and store in Core Data responses from remote server. In one of the backend JSON response I have something like that:
"response": [
{
"id": 1,
"start_time": "10:00:00",
"end_time": "14:00:00",
"name": "Object name"
},
.
.
.
]
In Model.xcdatamodeld I've defined entity with fields startTime and endTime type of Date. Generally all mappings JSON response to objects works correctly, but I have problem with JSON fields start_time and end_time.
do you have any advices how could be done correctly mapping time fields to data which could be stored in Core Data (SQLite datatbase)?

Answer 1

Create an NSDateFormatter with the appropriate format to parse your time strings. Add the date formatter with [[RKValueTransformer defaultValueTransformer] insertValueTransformer:dateFormatter atIndex:0];. Now RestKit will search through all your defined date formatters as well as the default ones whenever it needs to map to an NSDate destination.

Answer 2

Have inherited an app that is making extensive use of RestKit and is at 0.21 release now and its great. Needed to add date to string conversion in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.SSS and followed the advice above to add the required date formatter to the default compound formatters at index 0. However found calls to RKObjectMapping overrode this by adding ISO8601 formatter at index 0 for backward compatibility in +(void)initialize. Commented those lines out and I am getting the correct result. I guess it is possibly the way the app is structured, there are any number of calls to RKObjectMapping and it was not possible to add the date formatter in the right place without the change to RKObjectMapping.