C# DateTime Format

C# DateTime class in C# provides properties and methods to format dates in different DateTime formats. This article explains how to work with the C# DateTime format Including Timer and Sleep Methods.

Lets Starts with C# DateTime Object–

DateTime is a Struct in the System namespace. It helps the developers to retrieve information about system date, time, month, year, or even the day of the week.

How To Create The C# DateTime Object?

class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Year, Month, Date
            DateTime dt = new DateTime(2016, 03, 07);
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString());
            Console.Read();

        }
    }

The output of the above program will be: 3/7/2016 12:00:00 AM

If you see here in this output time is shown as 12:00:00 AM (default time). We haven’t set any time value and thus the system automatically assigned default values to an hour, minute, and second.

DateTime Object Properties:

DateTime dt = new DateTime(2016, 03, 07);
            int year = dt.Year;
            int month = dt.Month;
            int date = dt.Day;
            int hour = dt.Hour;
            int min = dt.Minute;
            int sec = dt.Second;
            int dayOfWeek = Convert.ToInt32(dt.DayOfWeek);
            int dayOfYear = dt.DayOfYear;

Year

Year property retrieves the year component of the date represented by the date-time instance. It returns an integer value expressed as a value between 1 and 9999.

Month

Month property retrieves the month component of the date represented by the date-time instance. It returns an integer value expressed as a value between 1 and 12.

Day

Day property retrieves the date component of the month represented by the date-time instance. It returns an integer value expressed as a value between 1 and 31.

Hour

Hour property retrieves the hour component of the date represented by the date-time instance. It returns an integer value expressed as a value between 0 and 23.

Minute

Min property retrieves the minute component of the date represented by the date-time instance. It returns an integer value expressed as a value between 0 and 59.

Second

Second property retrieves the second component of the date represented by the date-time instance. It returns an integer value expressed as a value between 0 and 59.

Day of the Week

Day of the week property retrieves the enumerated constant that indicates the day of the week represented by the date-time object. It also requires casting to accept integer value.

Day of Year

Day of year property retrieves the day of the year represented by the date-time object. It returns an integer value expressed as a value between 0 and 366.

Now Lets have a look at below code to see how we can use these properties.

DateTime dt = new DateTime(2016, 03, 07);
            int year = dt.Year;
            int month = dt.Month;
            int date = dt.Day;
            int hour = dt.Hour;
            int min = dt.Minute;
            int sec = dt.Second;
            int dayOfWeek = Convert.ToInt32(dt.DayOfWeek);
            int dayOfYear = dt.DayOfYear;

            Console.WriteLine(year);
            Console.WriteLine(month);
            Console.WriteLine(date);

            Console.WriteLine(hour);
            Console.WriteLine(min);
            Console.WriteLine(sec);

            Console.WriteLine(dayOfWeek);
            Console.WriteLine(dayOfYear);

            Console.Read();

The output of the above program will be:

Year: 2016
Month : 3
Date: 7

Hour : 0
Minute : 0
Second : 0

Day of the week: 1
Day of the year: 67

How To Get Current Date Time?

DateTime object contains a number of different methods to access system time. The “Now” method allows you to get the current system time/date and even allows you to operate on it.

Syntax:

DateTime dt = DateTime.Now;

We can easily convert it to string to get the current date-time or we can even change the format of the date by using the below formats.

NOTE : Consider current date time is 7 March 2016 11:06:25

Display date time in 24 hour format

DateTime.Now.ToString(“dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss”);

Ans :07/03/2016 11:06:25
Note: HH is used for 24 hour format.
           hh for 12 hour format

Display am/pm in date time or 12 hour format time.

 DateTime.Now.ToString(“hh:mm:ss tt”);

 Ans:11:06:25 AM
 Note: “tt” for AM or PM

Display time zone in date time.

DateTime.Now.ToString(“hh:mm:ss tt zzz”);

Ans: 11:06:25 AM +05:30 (Here +05:30 is time zone for India)
Note: zzz is used to display time zone.

Show full month name in date.

DateTime.Now.ToString(“dd-MMMM-yy”);

Ans: 07-March-16

How to format full day name in date?

DateTime.Now.ToString(“dddd-MMMM-yy”);

Ans: Monday-March-16
Note: MMMM for full month name

How to format full year name in date?

DateTime.Now.ToString (“dddd-MMMM-yyyy”);

Ans: Monday-March-2016
Note: yyyy for four digit year

To reduce/subtract date or days

DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10)

To add days

DateTime.Now.AddDays(10)

C# DateTime to “YYYYMMDDHHMMSS” format

DateTime.Now.ToString (“yyyyMMddHHmmss”);

You can convert the dateTime to any DateTime format by simply adding the required format in ToString (.ToString(“yyyyMMdd”)) as shown in the above example. Please note that C# datetime format is case-sensitive. Please check below.

y = year, m = minutes / M = months, d= date, h = 12 hour, H = 24 hour, s= seconds

Let’s have a look at below C# DateTime formats and their outputs. Here we see all the patterns of the C# DateTime, format, and outputs.

Lets have a look at below sample C# code that uses these C# datetime formats.

namespace DateTimeFormat
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string [] args)
        {
            // dt erpresents DateTime object.
            // Here DateTime is a Struct in the System namespace.
                                     //year,month,date,hour,minute,seconds
            DateTime dt = new DateTime(2016, 03, 07, 11, 06, 25);
            Console.WriteLine("Date: " + dt.ToString());

            // Datetime in different formats 
            Console.WriteLine("***Datetime in different formats***");
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("dd-MM-yyyy"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("MM-dd-yyyy"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("dddd, dd MMMM yyyy"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("dddd, dd MMMM yyyy HH:mm:ss"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("yyyyMMddHHmmss"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("HH:mm"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("HH:mm:ss"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("hh:mm tt"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm tt"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("H:mm"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy H:mm"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("h:mm tt"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy h:mm tt"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("MMMM dd"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fffffffK"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("ddd, dd MMM yyy HH:mm:ss 'GMT'"));
             Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"));
            Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("yyyy MMMM"));

            Console.ReadLine();

        }
    }
}

The output of the above program will be something like this:

The following table describes various C# DateTime formats and their results. Here we see all the patterns of the C# DateTime format, and results.

For	Format	Result	Notes
Day	%d	7	Represents the day of the month as a number tom 1 through 31.
	dd	07	Represents the day of the month as a number from 01 through 31.
	ddd	Mon	Represents the abbreviated name of the day (Mon Tues etc.).
	dddd	Monday	Represents the full name of the day (Monday, Tuesday, etc.)
Year	%y	11	Represents the year as a number from 1 through 99.
	yy	11	Represents the year as a number from 01 through 99.
	yyyy	2016	Represents the year (2011, 2012, etc.)
Month	%M	3	Represents the Month number (e.g. 3, 4, etc.)
	MM	03	Represents the Month number (e.g. 03, 04, etc.)
	MMM	Mar	Represents the abbreviated Month name (e.g. Mar, Apr, etc.)
	MMMM	March	Represents the full Month name (e.g. March, April, etc.)
Hour (8 PM)	%h	8	Represents the 12-hour clock hour (e.g. 8, 9, etc.)
	hh	08	Represents the 12-hour clock, with leading 0 (e.g. 08, 09, etc.)
	HH	20	Represents the 24-hour clock hour, with leading 0 (e.g. 22)
Minutes	%m	6	Minutes
	mm	06	Minutes with leading zero
Seconds	s	25	Seconds
	ss	25	Seconds with leading zero
AM PM	tt	AM	AM/PM
TimeZone	zzz	+5:30	Represents the time zone (e.g. +05.30)

What Is Sleep Method?

The sleep method is used to pause the running thread for a specific time span. It accepts time in milliseconds. Sleep is very useful in a multi-threading environment where you want one thread to stop to make way for other threads to complete their execution.

Syntax

System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);

Conclusion

In this article, we have learned about DateTime class. A DateTime object is used to gather information about the date and time of the system or to set a custom date and time for use for a particular application requirement.

Date and Time in C# are handled by DateTime class in C# that provides properties and methods to format dates in different C# DateTime formats.

We also learned about Sleep method, it is the part of System.Threading and is used to pause the execution for a certain time interval. This allows the programmers to start another thread in the multi-threading environment while the previous thread is paused.