I have a console application written in C# that makes use of DateTime.Now. With the Windows Region set to "English (United States)", the short date output is M/d/yyyy. I have an instance of my application running on a machine with the culture format set to "English (Canada)" and the short date format set to dd/MM/yyyy. Since I want consistency within my application across different servers, I changed the short date format in Windows' Region settings to M/d/yyyy. However, my application is still outputting DateTime.Now as dd/MM/yyyy. Is there something else that needs to be changed for my application to output in the format I specified?
I do this in various places but here is an example:
TimeZoneInfo customTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Eastern Standard Time");
DateTime thisTime = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(DateTime.Now, customTimeZone);
//The below output is not formatted how the Windows Region short date is specified.
Console.Writeline(thisTime);
In this case, my DateTime is not formatted how its specified in the Windows Region settings.
You can change the culture of the current thread as follows on application start. This affects the date format, currency format, etc.
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("en-US");
See MSDN: Globalization for more information (see section on Dates and Times).
If you can handle the date being as a string, I don't recommand you use the settings to get past this problem. You should use something like this :
DateTime.Now.ToString("MM\/dd\/yyyy")
This way you have full control over the output independently of region settings.
First, a little correction to the answer by #phadaphunk: the line
DateTime.Now.ToString("MM\/dd\/yyyy");
will cause an error: 'unrecognized escape sequence'. So, it can be corrected as
DateTime.Now.ToString(#"MM\/dd\/yyyy");
The more general way to specify the DateTime format as detailed in MSDN article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4%28v=vs.110%29.aspx would be the following:
String.Format("{0:MM/dd/yyyy}",DateTime.Now);
with CultureInfo.InvariantCulture explicitly specified as suggested by #Joe, or thread-specific CurrentCulture set to CultureInfo("en-US") as suggested by #async.
Hope this will help. Best regards,
Related
I'm facing a very strange issue. I'm writing to a CSV file like this:
sw.WriteLine($"{posting.publishedOn},{posting.ExpirationDate}");
Posting Date is a DateTime object and Expiration Date is a DateTime? object.
However, when I run this on my production server in Germany, it's very inconsistent as to which date format it prints out. Sometimes I will have dates formatted like this (European style):
Posting Date,Expiration Date
06.08.2018 11:49,08.07.2018 11:49
And sometimes I will have dates formatted like this (U. S. style):
Posting Date,Expiration Date
8/15/2018 7:56:12 AM,10/14/2018 7:56:12 AM
Posting Date and Expiration Date are completely separate .NET Objects, but each line will be consistent - i.e. if one column is in European format, the other one will be as well.
I tried setting the culture like this:
CultureInfo.DefaultThreadCurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("en-US");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("en-US");
but it didn't seem to make a difference.
This happens when I run the console application on my server in Germany.
What could be causing this? Is there a way to fix it without having to explicitly call ToString with a format every time I write a date?
Set the format explicitly, for example:
sw.WriteLine($"{posting.publishedOn.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm tt")},{posting.ExpirationDate?.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm tt")??""}");
EDIT: Just realized you explicitly said you don't want this solution. I'm going to leave my answer in case others find your question and ToString is a suitable solution.
Are you absolutely sure that the serialization is always happening in the same thread whose culture is being set?
Because if not, that may be the issue.
Just to debug it, please set the current thread culture immediately before the serialization code and check if the issue still happens, i.e.
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("en-US");
sw.WriteLine($"{posting.publishedOn},{posting.ExpirationDate}");
I believe you need to just set the specific culture like so:
CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("en-US");
I have the following code:
DateTime.TryParse("06-28-2012", new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-NZ"),
System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.AssumeLocal, out date);
I'm not sure why this is returning true since if I go into my Regional Settings in Windows, I only see the following date formats under short date:
d/MM/yyyy
d/MM/yy
dd/MM/yy
d.MM.yy
yyyy-MM-dd
So then why is a short date format like MM-dd-yyyy returning true? Shouldn't it return false?
I'm using this similar post as a source: DateTime c# parsing
Important:
Please note that I also have my regional settings set to use English (New Zealand) and chose
yyyy-MM-dd as my short date format.
Having your short date format set to yyyy-MM-dd is the cause of this behavior (I do not know if that the standard in New Zealand, but New Zealand's short date is set to d/MM/yyyy on my computer). I do not know if Dot Net, or the underlying Windows APIs are to blame, but it seems like it's smart enough to understand that the 4-digits part represents the year, and after that it just preserves the month-day order (Note that calling DateTime.TryParse("28-06-2012") will actually fail).
You can try using ParseExact, but be warned that will fail on a slightest change of the string (for example, when using a dot or a slash as a separator, instead of a dash.
In my opinion, it's probably best to leave the behavior as is, as it can handle more cases, but if you really must check if a date string was in a specified (yet flexible) format, Regex is the best option. For example Regex.IsMatch("2012/06/28", #"[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][./\\][0-9][0-9]?[./\\][0-9][0-9]?"); should suit your needs, while still allowing some flexibility.
You could try DateTime.ParseExact
Could you execute and post the result from the code below?
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern;
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.DateSeparator;
I have a datetime in this format "Wednesday, December 04, 2013". I want to translate it to different cultures at runtime so that i am able to store that in database according to culture.
This is my code:
dysMngmt.Day = curntDate.ToString("D");
The one line code above is getting the day.
So,please help me.
You can use the second argument of the ToString function, which enables you to pick a culture you see fit:
curntDate.ToString("D", CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US"))
As a side note, why are you saving the date in your database as a string? Why not use a native date date type? It will take less space and allow you comparisons etc., and then you'd just use the currect culture when reading it out of the database.
Unless you have a very good reason for handling the culture of each date seperatly within the application you should set this at the application level so that the default ToString() works with your intended culture.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306162
Also, you should probably also not store dates as text in your database.
UPDATE This looks to be a bug in Windows 7. I tested the same scenario with Windows 8 and I cannot replicate this there. Please see the MS Bug Report that I posted on this issue if you want more information. Thank you again to all that helped.
UPDATE 2 The error happens on Server 2008 R2 as well (Kind of expected that)
Original Submission
Using the examples on the following page Date Formats I am able to control the format of my date. However, one of my clients, using Windows 7, modified their calendar to display their short date like this 'ddd MM/dd/yy', see the image for the settings. .
This displays the clock like this .
This works fine except when I use a date on their machine. When I format the date like the following...
String.Format("{0:MM/dd/yy}", dt); //the result is 06 04 13, notice the spaces
If I take off the ddd to display the day of week in the calendar settings and use the same format option I see the following...
String.Format("{0:MM/dd/yy}", dt); //the result is 06/04/13, this time it has forward slashes
The .ToShortDateString() option on the date gives me "Tue 06/04/13" and crashes when going into a database. This is how the issue was found.
Outside of hard coding the format, i.e. joining the month to the forward slash to the day etc, does anyone know of what else I can try to get this to work?
It sounds like you are formatting the date as a string in order to send it in via some SQL. Have you considered using command parameters for this instead of string formatting?
Using the InvariantCulture should work. I created a test console app to check it. The code changes the thread's current culture to be the Invariant one:
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
/// Displays '06 04 13'
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0:MM/dd/yy}", System.DateTime.Now));
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;
/// Displays '06/04/13'
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0:MM/dd/yy}", System.DateTime.Now));
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
Edited To Note: This looks to be a bug with Windows 7. When changing the short date pattern via the control panel, using the "additional settings" tab as in the OP's post, both the CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture's date separator gets changed as well.
When you modify the short date format, it looks like the first non-format character is picked up as the date separator for the current culture. Both CurrentCulture and CUrrentUiCulture are modified to reflect that [unintended] customization. Looks like some [bright] developer made the [unwarranted] assumption that nobody would ever have a short date format that included something like day of the week.
Nice catch! Are you going to report the bug to Microsoft?
If you use the invariant culture to format dates, etc., user settings won't affect you. Try something like
String.Format( CultureInfo.InvariantCulture , "{0:MM/dd/yy}", dt);
or use an instance of the culture you want:
CultureInfo usa = CultureInfo.GetCultureINfo("en-US") ;
string.Format( usa , "{0:MM/dd/yy}" , dt ) ;
However, if the culture you specified matches the current culture set for the Windows OS, user customizations are applied: meaning, you'll have the same problem unless you use a culture that isn't the current windows culture.
More details at MDSN:
CultureInfo
Standard DateTime Format Strings
Custom DateTime Format Strings
Without specifying a specific culture, you'll get the current user's CurrentCulture or CurrentUICulture with any user-specified mods applied to it.
For those interested in more information on this please go to the MS Forums post that I put HERE.
I've run into a problem that's driving me crazy. In my application (ASP.NET MVC2 /.NET4), I simply running this:
DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString()
All the examples I've seen indicate I should get something like: 12:32 PM, however I'm getting 12:32 without the AM/PM.
I launched LinqPad 4 to see if I could replicate this. Instead, it returns 12:32 PM correctly.
What the hell?
You may also try a custom format to avoid culture specific confusions:
DateTime.Now.ToString("hh:mm tt")
KBrimington looks to be correct:
The string returned by the ToShortTimeString method is culture-sensitive. It reflects the pattern defined by the current culture's DateTimeFormatInfo object. For example, for the en-US culture, the standard short time pattern is "h:mm tt"; for the de-DE culture, it is "HH:mm"; for the ja-JP culture, it is "H:mm". The specific format string on a particular computer can also be customized so that it differs from the standard short time format string.
From MSDN
If you don't want to mess with the Culture for your whole thread/application, try this:
CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo("en-US");
string formatedDate = DateTime.Now.ToString("t", ci);
You can find the list of DateTime Format strings here.
Yeah, this depends on your Locale. What is the value of System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortTimePattern in your application?
See MSDN Link
You can set the thread's culture info and this will then be used by the ToShortTimeString() method. But understand that this will effect all code running in that thread.
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("en-us");
The function uses the users default patterns. They can be changed in the Control panel. Check out first tab in the 'Region and Language' Settings. Change the Short time pattern to a pattern that like 'h:mm tt' and you're done.
This may also need the CultureInfo.InvariantCulture
e.g. DateTime.Now.ToString("hh:mm:ss tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)