I'm having an issue with date/time formats in ASP.NET/C#. I have my SQL Server database set up with a PostDate field set to a type of "datetime". But it's saving the date in a strange format. I added a new row through a form and I got this as the date/time string:
2012-09-28 14:56:48.910
When it gets parsed by JSON.NET it gets even stranger. I get:
2012-09-28T14:56:48.91
The date and time are obviously correct, but how do I set things so that I can parse the date into a human-friendly way? There isn't really any code to post because the date is being added when the row is inserted. I'd like to format this as "Sept. 28, 2012 2:56 pm". How do I do that? Do I need to format the string before or after it's parsed as JSON?
That's not a "strange" format at all. The second form is ISO-8601; the first is ISO-8601 without the T. Considering the strange formats you can get in JSON, it looks like you've been let off pretty lightly!
Serialization formats aren't meant to be user-friendly, particularly - they're meant to be machine-to-machine formats.
I would hope that JSON.NET would give you a DateTime after parsing; it should only be giving you the ISO-8601 format after you've converted back to JSON.
If you've got a DateTime that you want to format for user consumption, there are all kinds of options with standard and custom format strings. Don't forget that you should respect the culture of the user, as far as possible - so make sure you're taking appropriate steps to either set the thread's current culture to be the user's one, or that you're passing the culture explicitly to DateTime.ToString etc.
You can try it in C#:
.ToString("MMM d yyyy, h:mm tt")
Related
I want to format localized date into format. e.g yyyyMMdd OR ddMMyyyy OR MMddyyyy based on system date format. Below is what I have tried and it is working , but need efficient way to do same.
DateTime.Now.ToLocalTime().Date.ToString().Replace("/","").Replace(":","").Replace(" ","").Replace("-","")
You can use the ToString overload(read also):
DateTime.Now.ToLocalTime().ToString("yyyyMMdd")
(why you think you need ToLocalTime here? Now always returns the local time)
cant use .ToString("yyyyMMdd") because i need different result
depending on what my system date format is. if system date time is
dd-MM-yyyy i want ddMMyyyy, if its yyyy-MM-dd then expected result is
yyyyMMdd
Then you either stick with your current approach or use something like this:
DateTime.Now.ToString("d").Replace(DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.DateSeparator, "")
I have a string date like 'Wednesday, May 15, 2013' when I Parse it o lost the original format, is there a way to know what was the original format date or get it before the final Parse?
No, you'll lose the original format, if will now be a different object type with no care for its original format prior to parsing.
Your best option would be to store the pre-parse format prior to parsing as a different variable.
However if you simply wish to format the date in that original format, see Farhad's answer.
You can use this for getting date in a fromat you wish.
String.Format("{0:D}", DateTime.Now); // Tuseday, May 21, 2013
The DateTime struct does not have a format, it stores all of those values on various properties. When you want to display it you specify which format to use.
Using a format specifier when displaying it will likely do what you want. This mdsn article provides some basic information on format specifiers. The only way you can use the exact format you show there is if you know it ahead of time and have a format specifier for it. If you know you'll want to display strings in that format throughout the program it will be easy, if you get many different formats and want to decide how to display your dt at runtime it will be fairly complicated. I'm sure you could write some code to figure out what it is, but once the DateTime is created it will have no notion of what format the string used to create it was in.
I am trying to parse a date that is coming from a source as "02/11/2013"
In my application, I set the user's culture to either en-CA or en-FR, with their date format's being "dd/MM/yyyy" or "M/d/yyyy"
If I parse the date, and pass in the format, will this work or does it depend on which format I saved to the database?
if (DateTime.TryParseExact(dateString, Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern, null, System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.None, out dtResult))
{
dt = dtResult;
}
I can think properly right now so I need some clarification.
Me passing in the format of "dd/MM/yyyy" or "M/d/yyyy", does this format the date no matter what format the source is in, or is it me telling the datetime parse that the source will be in this format so use this?
What I am weary of is that someone is saving to the db in one format, and then a french person wants to read the date and their own format (yes I should be storing in utc).
ADO.NET is strongly typed; there are well known types for storing most data. In the case of dates, that would be DateTime in .NET and datetime in most database systems. If you ever need to worry about culture, then you're already doing it wrong, because you are passing the data around as a string rather than as a DateTime / datetime.
This then renders your concern here redundant:
What I am weary of is that someone is saving to the db in one format, and then a french person wants to read the date and their own format (yes I should be storing in utc).
because a DateTime / datetime has no notion of format - it is simply a date/time value. Any UI presentation / parsing of string data should be completely isolated and specific to the UI. Beyond the UI code you should (when talking about dates/times) be using DateTime / datetime exclusively.
Similarly, when storing an integer you should be using int.
If the date is stored only as "02/11/2013" without any other culture identifying information there is no way for you to know how to properly interpret it! You are absolutely right being worried that somebody with a en-FR culture might save a date to the database as "02/11/2013" meaning the 2nd of November and then somebody with an en-US culture might read that date and interpret it as the 11th of February.
You should only pass the current culture if you know that is relevant, meaning that you know the date string was generated using that culture.
A better approach is to NOT store dates like that in the first place. It's best to store the date in a format that includes timezone as well as format information such as the Internet Date/Time RFC 3339 format.
Or, if you can't, at least make sure to take the date and always convert it to say en-US culture before storing in the database and than pass that culture to the DateTime.Parse when reading from the database.
The .NET XML serialization code for dates can come in handy when serializing/deserializing dates in RFC 3339 format. See this SO post for more info..
Is there any way to find the current format of date in the time zone? I am retrieving date in the form of string from database and in case the current datetime format does not match, crash comes, "String was not recognized as valid datetime"
It sounds like what's important isn't the current format of the date as your code understand it, but as it gets it from the database. Why is it in the database as a string to start with? If at all possible you should make it an appropriate date/time related field in the database and make the driver do the conversion.
If that's not possible, you should perform the conversion in your code using a custom date/time format which matches what the server gives you, and in an appropriate culture (quite possibly the invariant one).
The DateTime.Parse method uses the format that is set on the executing thread. See the Thread.CurrentCulture to retrieve the CultureInfo that use used when parsing. The CultureInfo.DateTimeFormat returns the format you are looking for.
If you know the format, you should use the DateTime.ParseExact method to parse the input string with a known format.
Sound like you need to use the DateTime.TryParse-method:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.tryparse.aspx
If you don't know in which format the date is passed and .NET can't figure it out I think your out of luck. You could of cause try to see if you could figure out the format by yourself by using regex.
I have date in this format "1999-05-31T13:20:00.000-05:00" I want to add some hours or days to it . BizTalk expects same datetime format how can i pass it as Datetime in that format ? No string . Date time with same format as source date.
You should be able to do something like this to get it into a DateTimeOffset object. After that you can call whatever methods you want on it.
DateTimeOffset dateTime = DateTimeOffset.Parse( "1999-05-31T13:20:00.000-05:00" );
To get the value back just use a formatting string.
dateTime.ToString( "O" ); //this should be the same format as you started with
Here are some other options http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/az4se3k1.aspx
Here is a link to the DateTimeOffset structure
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb351654.aspx
I hope this helps.
The DateTime object is format-independent (for the most part). So whether or not it starts in the format you list or not doesn't matter. You can always get it back into that format (using the ToString("o") function). But that's as a string (when format matters).
After a quick search, it looks like you must be talking about string format, even though you said no string. So the other answer or the ToString("o"); part of mine is relevant.