Question: Forgive me as I'm new to Objective C. 

I am getting back dates from a .NET webservice in the /Date(xxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxx)/ format. I'm looking for some direction on how to best parse this into an NSDate object. I've tried using dateWithTimeIntervalSince1970 on it but it comes back with a date in the year 1969 for a date I know is in 2006. 

Looking for some direction on the proper way to handle JSON dates.

Thanks in advance!

Answer: 
Theory: MS encoded the C# DateTime in JSON as milliseconds since 1970.
Solution: 

```
NSString*
    dateAsString = @"/Date(1353720343336+0000)/";
    dateAsString = [dateAsString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"/Date("
                                                           withString:@""];
    dateAsString = [dateAsString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"+0000)/"
                                                           withString:@""];

unsigned long long milliseconds = [dateAsString longLongValue];
NSTimeInterval interval = milliseconds/1000;
NSDate* date = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSince1970:interval];

```

This is the shortest solution I can think of.
-(NSString\*)convertToUTCTime:(NSString\*)strDate{

```
NSDate *currentDate = [NSDate date];
myDate = [commonDateFormatter dateFromString: strDate];
NSTimeInterval distanceBetweenDates = [currentDate timeIntervalSinceDate:myDate];
return [self stringFromTimeInterval:distanceBetweenDates];

```

}
- (NSString \*)stringFromTimeInterval:(NSTimeInterval)interval {
 NSInteger ti = (NSInteger)interval;
 NSInteger minutes = (ti / 60) % 60;
 NSInteger hours = (ti / 3600);

```
if (hours > 24) {
    NSInteger days = hours/24;
    if (days > 30) {
       NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
       [dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"EEE d MMM, h:mm a"];
       //[dateFormatter setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneWithName:@"IST"]];
        NSString *daydate = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:myDate];
        return daydate;
    }
    else{
    return [NSString stringWithFormat:@" %2ldd",(long)days];
    }
}else{
    if (hours == 0 && minutes < 1) {
        return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Today"];
    }
    else if (hours == 0 && minutes < 60){
        return [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%2ldm ",(long)minutes];
    }
    else{
    return [NSString stringWithFormat:@" %2ldh",(long)hours];
    }
}

```

}