C# Date Time Formatting

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Overview Patterns C# Date Time Examples

Overview

C# is a programming language that is owned and developed by Microsoft that allows you to build applications on the .net framework. Date Time Formatting in C# is based off of the ToString function that supports various patterns to display the date and time as desired. More Documentation for C# date time formatting can be found below:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/custom-date-and-time-format-strings

Patterns

Date Time Formatting in C#

The folling example will display the following output:

Todays date is January 15, 2018.
The current date and time: 01/15/18 12:36:45 +00:00

DateTime mydate1 = new DateTime(2018, 1, 15); Console.WriteLine("Todays date is " + mydate1.ToString("MMMM dd, yyyy") + "."); DateTimeOffset mydate2 = new DateTimeOffset(2018, 1, 15, 12, 36, 45, TimeSpan.Zero); Console.WriteLine("The current date and time: {0:MM/dd/yy H:mm:ss zzz}", mydate2); 

The below example is a working C# Date Time program that will convert a string to a DateTime object but only if it is in the correct format. You will see some values will not convert correctly because they are not in the correct format.

It will display the following output when it is finished.

Unable to convert ’30-12-2011′ to a date and time.
Unable to convert ’12-30-2011′ to a date and time.
Unable to convert ’30-12-11′ to a date and time.
Converted ’12-30-11′ to 12/30/2011.

using System;
using System.Globalization;

public class Example
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      string[] dateValues = { "30-12-2011", "12-30-2011", 
                              "30-12-11", "12-30-11" };
      string pattern = "MM-dd-yy";
      DateTime parsedDate;
      
      foreach (var dateValue in dateValues) {
         if (DateTime.TryParseExact(dateValue, pattern, null, 
                                   DateTimeStyles.None, out parsedDate))
            Console.WriteLine("Converted '{0}' to {1:d}.", 
                              dateValue, parsedDate);
         else
            Console.WriteLine("Unable to convert '{0}' to a date and time.", 
                              dateValue);
      }
   }
}