Relatively new Windows Phone developer here, looking for some help. Basically I'm messing around with an app that I'm looking to eventually put on the marketplace.
Basically the app is counting down to a specific date, I've got the countdown working with no problems, however i do have a problem with the date format as I'm in the UK and the date format is dd/MM/yyyy whereas the states is MM/dd/yyyy. So the app goes into negative figures for anyone in the US. Basically i need help with some sort of workaround, whether it's setting a universal date format for my app or something like that. Here is the code for the countdown:
DateTime startDate = DateTime.Now;
var launch = DateTime.Parse("01/08/2012 00:00:00 AM");
TimeSpan t = launch - startDate;
Countdown.Text = string.Format("\r {0}\r Days \r {1}\r Hours \r {2}\r Minutes \r {3}\r Seconds", t.Days, t.Hours, t.Minutes, t.Seconds);
If you’re hard-coding the date, then you should use the DateTime(int,int,int) constructor, rather than parsing it from a string. The three parameters would always be interpreted as year, month, day (in that order).
var launch = new DateTime(2012, 08, 11);
You can also parse and format dates for other cultures by setting the current culture or Using a CultureInfo to format the string.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5hh873ya.aspx for more info.
The ToString() method for DateTime has an overload that takes a custom format string.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4.aspx
It would be fairly simple to ask for, or establish the users region, and send dates to him in the correct format.
Beyond that, there is an overload of ToString that takes a System.Globalization.CultureInfo object so you can do something like.
myDateTime.ToString(new System.Globalization.CultureInfo(Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name));
This should give you the datetime formatted correctly for the users region based on OS settings.
Related
I have a WP8 app, which will send the current time to a web service.
I get the datetime string by calling
DateTime.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss.fff")
For most users it works great and gives me the correct string like "09/10/2013 04:04:31.415". But for some user the resulted string is something like "09/14/2013 07.20.31.371", which causes problem in my web service.
Is it because some culture format issue? How can I make sure the result string is delimited by colon instead of dot?
Is it because some culture format issue?
Yes. Your user must be in a culture where the time separator is a dot. Both ":" and "/" are interpreted in a culture-sensitive way in custom date and time formats.
How can I make sure the result string is delimited by colon instead of dot?
I'd suggest specifying CultureInfo.InvariantCulture:
string text = dateTime.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss.fff",
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Alternatively, you could just quote the time and date separators:
string text = dateTime.ToString("MM'/'dd'/'yyyy HH':'mm':'ss.fff");
... but that will give you "interesting" results that you probably don't expect if you get users running in a culture where the default calendar system isn't the Gregorian calendar. For example, take the following code:
using System;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Threading;
class Test
{
static void Main()
{
DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
CultureInfo culture = new CultureInfo("ar-SA"); // Saudi Arabia
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = culture;
Console.WriteLine(now.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fff"));
}
}
That produces output (on September 18th 2013) of:
11/12/1434 15:04:31.750
My guess is that your web service would be surprised by that!
I'd actually suggest not only using the invariant culture, but also changing to an ISO-8601 date format:
string text = dateTime.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fff", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
This is a more globally-accepted format - it's also sortable, and makes the month and day order obvious. (Whereas 06/07/2013 could be interpreted as June 7th or July 6th depending on the reader's culture.)
: has special meaning: it is The time separator. (Custom Date and Time Format Strings).
Use \ to escape it:
DateTime.ToString(#"MM/dd/yyyy HH\:mm\:ss.fff")
Or use CultureInfo.InvariantCulture:
DateTime.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss.fff", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)
I would suggest going with the second one, because / has special meaning as well (it is The date separator.), so you can have problems with that too.
You can use InvariantCulture because your user must be in a culture that uses a dot instead of a colon:
DateTime.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss.fff", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
I bumped into this problem lately with Windows 10 from another direction, and found the answer from #JonSkeet very helpful in solving my problem.
I also did som further research with a test form and found that when the the current culture was set to "no" or "nb-NO" at runtime (Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("no");), the ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss") call responded differently in Windows 7 and Windows 10. It returned what I expected in Windows 7 and HH.mm.ss in Windows 10!
I think this is a bit scary! Since I believed that a culture was a culture in any Windows version at least.
You can use String.Format:
DateTime d = DateTime.Now;
string str = String.Format("{0:00}/{1:00}/{2:0000} {3:00}:{4:00}:{5:00}.{6:000}", d.Month, d.Day, d.Year, d.Hour, d.Minute, d.Second, d.Millisecond);
// I got this result: "02/23/2015 16:42:38.234"
Convert Date To String
Use name Space
using System.Globalization;
Code
string date = DateTime.ParseExact(datetext.Text, "dd-MM-yyyy", CultureInfo.InstalledUICulture).ToString("yyyy-MM-dd");
Is DateTime format strictly dependent on the language of the OS being used? Because the following doesn't work:
DateTime date = DateTime.Now;
var usCultureInfo = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("en-US");
Console.WriteLine(date.ToString("dddd MM-dd-yy"),usCultureInfo);
I'd like the result to print out as Saturday, 06-29-2013 but the day gets printed out in Korean 토요일, 06-29-2013.
You are a victim of Composite Formatting overload for Console.WriteLine where you could pass Format string and a series of object to be inserted in the placeholders of the format string
You need to write in this way
Console.WriteLine(date.ToString("dddd MM-dd-yy",usCultureInfo));
and you get the right day text.
See the specs here DateTime.ToString(format, IFormatProvider)
Or simply you can use
string abc=date.ToString("dddd MM-dd-yy");
So this seems like an easy thing to do, but still has me stumped. I want to display a list of strings to my user, based off of a few file's creation dates. So basically, display a list of DateTimes. The challenge is that want to use a custom format (something like 5/6/13 12:01 PM) but I want he date part of that to display differently based on how you have your system displaying the date (ie. a Brit would display that date as 6/5/13).
I thought I could just build two strings (one for date and one for time) and make sure that they date is region-formatted, but there is no default option for 5/6/13 (only 5/6/2013):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/az4se3k1.aspx
Next I hoped maybe the DateTime.ToShortDateString() function would work, but it displays as 5/6/2013 as well.
I know I can use a completely custom format like this: DateTime.ToString("M/d/yy h:mm tt") but I don't want to fix the date with the month before the day.
I suppose if I can' figure anything out then I could just build a custom datetime for America and for Europe and then query the OS for what datetime they are displaying in. But that seems really excessive. Any thoughts?
You could retrieve the current ShortDate format from current culture, change it and use it with ToString()
var currentDate = DateTime.Now;
var shortDateFormat = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern;
var newShortDateFormat = shortDateFormat.Replace("yyyy", "yy");
Console.WriteLine(currentDate.ToString(shortDateFormat));
Console.WriteLine(currentDate.ToString(newShortDateFormat));
System.Globalization.CultureInfo implements IFormatProvider, so you can provide a CultureInfo object as a parameter to the ToString method.
MSDN seems to have an example of exactly what you want.
I have developed a winform application that makes use of the format dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm:ss (24 hr system).
When I try the application on another computer, I get an error, because the standard datetime format there is dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss am/pm.
Moreover, the controls in which the datetime is stored, also hold the datetime string in a different format: d/M/yyyy hh:mm:ss am/pm, eg 1/4/2013 12:00:00 A.M. instead of 01/04/2013 12:00:00 A.M.
Can I force the other system to somehow use the same format?
I am a novice here. Thanks for the help.
When displaying a DateTime object, there are two things to keep in mind.
Culture settings: when you don't specify an explicit culture, the culture that's set by the system your application is running on is used.
Format strings: when converting a DateTime object to a string, you can give it a format string as an argument that specifies how your DateTime object should be formatted. Something like: "d" for a short date pattern or "t" to only display the time.
Combining these two will give you full control over how to display your DateTime objects. You should however be careful in forcing a certain culture setting on the user. If your application should support globalization (so multiple users from different cultures can use your app) you shouldn't depend on a specific culture. Instead, you should store all your data culture-insensitive and format it with the users culture when you display it on screen.
Here is an example how to use both the CultureInfo object and a format string:
string myDate = "10-05-2013 08:52:30";
DateTime date = DateTime.Parse(myDate);
Console.WriteLine(date.ToString("d", new CultureInfo("en-US"))); // 5/10/2013
Console.WriteLine(date.ToString("d", new CultureInfo("nl-NL"))); // 10-5-2013
Console.WriteLine(date.ToString("f", new CultureInfo("nl-NL"))); // vrijdag 10 mei 2013 08:52
You should be able to set the culture for the application to the one you need to use.
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("EN");
I would not recommend to force the system to one date and time format. From my point of view the better question would be, why is your application using a specified format? The .NET Framework is designed that you don't have to care about such things.
Anyway, if you will really force the system to display the data in a specified format, change the thread culture:
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("de-DE")
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("de-DE")
I have a bit of code that display the date within a text field as shown below
textField.Text = DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString();
It shows as
11/03/2011
anyone know how I could format here to show it as
11/03/11
Thanks in advance
Yes. Take a look at this Date and Time formatting page.
Or: theDate.ToString("dd/MM/yy")
Very simple:
string strFormat = "dd/MM/yy";
textField.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString(strFormat);
note that the format string is case-sensitive, make sure you use capital 'M's for month, otherwise it will consider 'minutes' for 'm'.
More general help about datetime formatting:
MMM: display three-letter month
MM: display two-digit month
ddd: display three-letter day of the WEEK
d: display day of the MONTH
HH: display two-digit hours on 24-hour scale
mm: display two-digit minutes
yyyy: display four-digit year
DateTime.Now.ToString("dd/MM/yy")
DateTime.Now.ToString("dd/MM/yy")
But you need to remember that ToShortDateString() is culture sensitive, returning different strings depending on the regional settings of the computer - the above is not.
You could change the settings on your computer, in Windows 7, you will find the Short Date format under Region and Language in the control panel.
Here is an alternative if you don't like format strings.
var fp = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-GB");
textField.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString(fp.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern);