CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#visual-studio-2015
Newbie
Newbie

Reputation: 179

Suggest correct data type to store user's birthday

I need a way to whatsUrBirthDay = Console.ReadLine();

I could easily string whatsUrBirthDay; but I want to be able to store their birthday so that I can 'relatively' easily recall it later and possibly do calculations with it.

Is there such a data type that will allow for a specific format of MM/DD/YYYY? I assume I can ask for Month as a string, then look for matching spelling or numbers to = some variable afterward, but surely there's an easier way?

Thanks in advance!

Edit I'd like to add that 'no', that is not the variable I'm choosing - just did it this way so you would understand what I'm asking for.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3534

Answers (2)

sujith karivelil
sujith karivelil

Reputation: 29036

Better you prompt the user to enter the date in some specific format, let it be dd-MM-yyyy and show an example as well So that you can validate the input and store to a DateTime variable; See the code below:

string myDateFormat = "dd-MM-yyyy";
Console.WriteLine("Enter your Birth Date in the format {0} \n (example : {1}) : ",myDateFormat,DateTime.Today.ToString(myDateFormat));
DateTime userBirthday;
if (DateTime.TryParseExact(Console.ReadLine(), myDateFormat, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, DateTimeStyles.None, out userBirthday))
{
    Console.WriteLine("You lived {0} days from {1} ", (DateTime.Today - userBirthday).TotalDays, userBirthday.ToString(myDateFormat));
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("Wrongly formated input");
}

Note : if the input is not in desired format, then TryParseExact will returns false based on that we can show warning message

Upvotes: 2

nozzleman
nozzleman

Reputation: 9659

As stated in the comments, the correct type for Dates is DateTime. You can achieve what you want using the Parse-method like that:

DateTime birthday = DateTime.Parse(Console.ReadLine(), out birthday);

DateTime also provides a TryParse-Method which can be used to handle invalid input:

DateTime birthday;

// error handling similar to the following (if-clause work fine to)
while(!DateTime.TryParse(Console.ReadLine())) 
{
    Console.WriteLine("Invalid input, try again.");
}

If you are new to C# and want to know more about parsing dates/times, consider reading https://www.dotnetperls.com/datetime-parse which explains the most important aspects with simple examples (including error handling and such)

Upvotes: 0

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