CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#asp.net-mvcdatetimeformat
Matthew Hood
Matthew Hood

Reputation: 978

Set Default DateTime Format c#

Is there a way of setting or overriding the default DateTime format for an entire application. I am writing an app in C# .Net MVC 1.0 and use alot of generics and reflection. Would be much simpler if I could override the default DateTime.ToString() format to be "dd-MMM-yyyy". I do not want this format to change when the site is run on a different machine.

Edit - Just to clarify I mean specifically calling the ToString, not some other extension function, this is because of the reflection / generated code. Would be easier to just change the ToString output.

Upvotes: 42

Views: 66965

Answers (7)

Miguel
Miguel

Reputation: 1715

Using .Net 6 put something like this in your program.cs after app.UseAuthentication()/app.UseAuthorization() and before app.MapControllerRoute(...):

var ci = new CultureInfo("en-US");
ci.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern = "MM/dd/yyyy";
app.UseRequestLocalization(new RequestLocalizationOptions
{
    DefaultRequestCulture = new Microsoft.AspNetCore.Localization.RequestCulture(ci),
    SupportedCultures = new List<CultureInfo> { ci },
    SupportedUICultures = new List<CultureInfo> { ci }
});

Here I'm changing the short date format, but you can also change currency symbol, decimal separator, etc.

Upvotes: 2

Paolo Tedesco
Paolo Tedesco

Reputation: 57172

The "default format" of a datetime is:

ShortDatePattern + ' ' + LongTimePattern

at least in the current mono implementation. This is particularly painful in case you want to display something like 2001-02-03T04:05:06Z i.e. the date and time combined as specified in ISO 8606, but not a big problem in your case:

using System;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Threading;

namespace test {
    public static class Program {
        public static void Main() {
            CultureInfo culture = (CultureInfo)CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Clone();
            culture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern = "dd-MMM-yyyy";
            culture.DateTimeFormat.LongTimePattern = "";
            Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = culture;
            Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now);
        }
    }
}

This will set the default behavior of ToString on datetimes to return the format you expect.

Upvotes: 61

Bjorn Bailleul
Bjorn Bailleul

Reputation: 3255

If you want to be sure that your culture stays the same, just set it yourself to avoid troubles.

System.Globalization.CultureInfo ci = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("nl-BE");
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ci;
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = ci;

The above example sets the culture of the thread to Belgian-Dutch.

CurrentCulture does all the date and time handling and CurrentUICulture handles UI localization like resources.

Upvotes: 1

Fernando
Fernando

Reputation: 4028

I'm not sure if this would work for a web app, but you could try to set the DateTimeFormat property for the current culture.

Check this and specially this.

Upvotes: 0

Tadas Šukys
Tadas Šukys

Reputation: 4220

DateTime.ToString() combines the custom format strings returned by the ShortDatePattern and LongTimePattern properties of the DateTimeFormatInfo. You can specify these patterns in DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.

I've never tried this my self.

Upvotes: 1

Seb Nilsson
Seb Nilsson

Reputation: 26408

It is dependent on your application's localization-settings. Change that accordingly to get correct format.

Otherwise have a helper-class or an extension-method which always handles your DateTime.

public static string ToMyDateTime(this DateTime dateTime) {
    return dateTime.ToString("dd-MMMM-yy");
}

Upvotes: 9

ema
ema

Reputation: 5773

You can write an ExtensionMethod like this:

public static string ToMyString(this DateTime dateTime)
{
  return dateTime.ToString("needed format");
}

Upvotes: -2

Related Questions