CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#datetime
Jack
Jack

Reputation: 7547

Reason for this strange behavior of DateTime?

I have this method:

public static DateTime GetDatetime(string ampm, string hour, string minute)
        {
            int iHour = Convert.ToInt32(hour);
            int iMinute = Convert.ToInt32(minute);

            if (ampm == "PM" && iHour != 12)
                iHour = 12 + iHour;

            DateTime dtTime = new DateTime(DateTime.Now.Year, DateTime.Now.Month,
                DateTime.Now.Day, iHour, iMinute, 0);

            return dtTime;
        }

which basically accepts AM/PM and hour and minute and gives DateTime. I give input as 

   DateTime startTIme = GetDatetime("AM", "12", "30");

I get time correctly as 12:30 in morning on my local machine. However when I run this same method on server I get 12:30 PM. This is driving me nuts. Can anybody help me out? What am I doing wrong?

Update:

My new function is:

public static DateTime GetDatetime(string ampm, string hour, string minute)
        {
            int iHour = Convert.ToInt32(hour);
            int iMinute = Convert.ToInt32(minute);

            if (ampm == "PM" && iHour != 12)
                iHour = 12 + iHour;
            else if (ampm == "AM" && iHour == 12)
                iHour = 0;

            DateTime dtTime = new DateTime(DateTime.Now.Year, DateTime.Now.Month,
                DateTime.Now.Day, iHour, iMinute, 0);

            return dtTime;
        }

This seem to work fine. Can anybody find any issue in this code?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 271

Answers (4)

Styxxy
Styxxy

Reputation: 7517

You can simply use the DateTime.Parse() (msdn link) (or TryParse()) method to do this. Look at following example code:

string[] times = new string[] 
{
    "00:00 AM"
    , "01:00 AM"
    , "10:00 AM"
    , "12:00 AM"
    , "00:00 PM"
    , "01:00 PM"
    , "10:00 PM"
    , "12:00 PM"
};

foreach (var time in times)
{
    DateTime date = DateTime.Parse(time);
    Console.WriteLine(date);
}

Gives output:

03/05/2012 00:00:00
03/05/2012 01:00:00
03/05/2012 10:00:00
03/05/2012 00:00:00
03/05/2012 12:00:00
03/05/2012 13:00:00
03/05/2012 22:00:00
03/05/2012 12:00:00

In your case, just make a string that contains "hour":"minutes" + "AM" or "PM". In code that would be (if your input is invalid, the Parse() method throws an exception or else a very weird result)):

public static DateTime GetDatetime(string ampm, string hour, string minute)
{
    return DateTime.Parse(hour + ":" + minute + " " + ampm);
}

Upvotes: 1

Meta-Knight
Meta-Knight

Reputation: 17845

Your function always returns 12:30 PM (noon) when called with: GetDatetime("AM", "12", "30");

As Eric mentioned the reason you're getting different results might be that the two computers print out dates in a different way.

For example with my settings the result is:

2012-05-03 12:30:00 (half-hour past noon in my computer's format)

With US settings the result is:

5/3/2012 12:30:00 PM (half-hour past noon in US format)

To print the date in the same way on both machines, you can specify a culture info to use for the date formatting:

DateTime dateResult = GetDatetime("AM", "12", "30");
string strResult = dateResult.ToString(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US"));

On all computers strResult will have the following value: 5/3/2012 12:30:00 PM

But most importantly, you should fix your code to get the expected result (12AM should be midnight, not noon).

Upvotes: 2

Chris
Chris

Reputation: 2481

Your machine isnt setup to use 24 hour clock

The server is.

Change that in the usual way and all will be fine :)

How to:

  1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
    1. Click Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options, and then click Regional and Language Options.
    2. To change one or more of the individual settings, click Customise.
    3. Got to time tab and the formats are there!

Upvotes: 0

Eric Frick
Eric Frick

Reputation: 857

Please check the current culture like this:

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-us");

Because in different cultures, dates are written in different formats. e.g. (may the 3rd) = 3/5/2012 or 5/3/2012 and so on

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.threading.thread.currentculture.aspx

Upvotes: 1

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