Urgent - Please help with formating date in Visual C# app

Question

I have one class for formating date in my web app. The date should be the same for every object in app and should be as a NEWSTRING

public const string NEWSTRING = "dd/MM/yy HH:mm";

    public static string FormatDate(DateTime date) {
        return date.ToString(NEWSTRING);
    }

When I try to convert for example
Text1.Text = FormatDate(currentDate);

where currentDate is:
DateTime currentDate = "yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss"

I get as the result dd-mm-yy hh:mm instead of dd/MM/yy HH:mm

How can I get the date in format dd/MM/yy HH:mm by using my FormatDate ?

Mike Gold · Answer

This should solve your problem. Use the custom date time parse method in this post. class Program { static void Main( string [] args) { DateTime dt = ParseUniqueDateTimeFormat( 2007-18-07 23:15 ); Console .WriteLine(FormatDate(dt)); Console .ReadLine(); } public const string NEWSTRING = dd/MM/yy HH:mm ; public static string FormatDate( DateTime date) { return date.ToString(NEWSTRING); } // parse this format into a date time // 2007-18-07 23:15 static DateTime ParseUniqueDateTimeFormat( string uniqueDateString) { DateTime result = new DateTime (); try { string [] dateAndTime = uniqueDateString.Split( ' ' ); string [] dateParams = dateAndTime[0].Trim().Split( '-' ); string [] timeParams = dateAndTime[1].Trim().Split( ':' ); int year = Convert .ToInt32(dateParams[0]); int month = Convert .ToInt32(dateParams[2]); int day = Convert .ToInt32(dateParams[1]); int hour = Convert .ToInt32(timeParams[0]); int minute = Convert .ToInt32(timeParams[1]); result = new DateTime (year month day hour minute 0); } catch ( Exception ex) { Console .WriteLine( Couldn't Parse {0}  uniqueDateString); } return result; } }

Mike Gold · Answer

Still not sure you are describing the problem correctly. I tried the following code and it does exactly what you expect. The problem I think you are having is that .NET can't parse 2007-18-07 23:15 into a DateTime. It doesn't recognize the format. You'll need to parse this manually yourself. In the next reply I'll show you how to do this. -Mike class Program { static void Main( string [] args) { // DateTime dt = Convert.ToDateTime(2007-18-07 23:15); DateTime dt = new DateTime (2007 7 18 23 15 0); Console .WriteLine(FormatDate(dt)); Console .ReadLine(); } public const string NEWSTRING = dd/MM/yy HH:mm ; public static string FormatDate( DateTime date) { return date.ToString(NEWSTRING); } }

Vinnie · Answer

I want to produce 18/07/07 23:15 at the end. I read date from grid field where date is 2007-18-07 23:15:01 and want to use FormatDate to produce 18/07/07 23:15 in the textbox. Text1.Text = ClassName. FormatDate(Convert.ToDateTime(dv.Table.Rows[0][0])); or Text1.Text = ClassName. FormatDate (2007-18-07 23:15); ClassName contains public const string NEWSTRING = dd/MM/yy HH:mm; public static string FormatDate (DateTime date) { return date.ToString(NEWSTRING); } but this code produce this 18-07-07 23:15 and I have many grids with dates like decribed before so I should change somehow ClassName. FormatDate.

Mike Gold · Answer

Not sure I understand your question. DateTime doesn't have a format until you use the ToString method on it. The DateTime class is a numerical representation of your date. so DateTime myDateTime = new DateTime(year month day hour minute second); myDateTime.ToString(yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm) will produce a string with the format 2007-18-07 23:15 for e.g.