ASP.NET C# MVC - Change format for datetime directly on DB or Model

Question

Hello,

I'm struggling myself trying to find an easy way to change the DateTime format for my Table field.

I have a Model called Article with a field called releaseDate that is a DateTime

I managed to do it (visually) by converting the

Article.releaseDate.ToString("dd/MM/yy")

but the thing is when I try to submit a date with this format from the create action it returns an error telling the the format is wrong.

Any easy way to change the default ("MM/dd/yy") to ("dd/MM/yy")?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The View will eventually be rendered in HTML, and since HTML is text-based, you might as well just take the consequence and make the releaseData property a string instead of a DateTime.

That would also have the added benefit that you don't have to invoke methods (ToString) from your Views.

If you need to round-trip the value (i.e. submit it) you will need to parse it in any case, because it will arrive in the web request as a string. Such parsing can be done in a custom ModelBinder if the DefaultModelBinder doesn't fit the bill.

Answer 2

Yep. It sure is mate :)

try changing the current thread's CULTURE. By default, it takes the system's OS. but u can override that.

check this out...

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("en-GB");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("en-GB");

Here's a good post explaining ....

HTH.

Answer 3

Your problem here is that since the compiler only sees two digits/two digits/two digits in both cases, it has no way to know that you want day/month/year instead of month/day/year until it tries to actually casts, and notices that your value for the month is >= 12.

You could solve this by splitting the date on /, and throwing in the arguments in the "correct" order to the compiler, like so:

string[] dateParts = input.Split("/");
int day; int month; int year;

// You could use a boolean variable here to double-check that all casts are successful
Int32.TryParse(dateParts[0], out day);
Int32.TryParse(dateParts[1], out month);
Int32.TryParse(dateParts[2], out year);

var output = new DateTime(year, month, day);

If you put this in a separate function you could use it like this to support both formats:

DateTime releaseDate;
try
{
    // will throw exception if input is not in the default format
    releaseDate = new DateTime(input);
}
catch (InvalidFormatException ex)
{
    releaseDate = GetDateTimeFromNonStandardInput(input);
}
catch 
{
    throw; // or do whatever error handling you feel like.
}

Personally, I'd write the GetDateTimeFromNonStandardInput() as an extension method to the DateTime class.

Answer 4

You could change the culture information on a page by page basis by including

<%@ Page UICulture="en" Culture="en-GB" %>

or globally across all pages by adding to your web.config

<globalization uiCulture="en" culture="en-GB" />

Both will change the DateTime model binding to dd/MM/yyyy so no conversion is necessary.

See this question for more information

The code equivalent is

CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture.DateTimeFormat
 = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat
 = new CultureInfo( "en-GB", false ).DateTimeFormat;