How can I specify the latest time of day with DateTime

Question

I am using a System.DateTime object to allow a user to select a date range. The user is only able to select a date (not time) using a third party calendar so I will need to automatically specify the time of day it should use (ie: 00:00:00 or 23:59:59) after the date is chosen.

How can I specify the time after the date is already stored as a DateTime object by the calendar selector? I could use the AddHours, AddMinutes, AddSeconds methods but those are relative to the current time which may not be 00:00:00.

The startDate will need to have a time of 00:00:00 and endDate have a time of 23:59:59 to account for the entire days.

Answer 1

If you already have a DateTime object created and want to replace the time with the 11:59:59PM for that given date, then you can use the .Date property to get the date with time set to 00:00:00 and then add the hours, minutes and seconds. For example:

var dt = yourDateInstance.Date.AddHours(23).AddMinutes(59).AddSeconds(59);

If by latest time, you mean 11:59:59 PM, then this should also work:

var dt = new DateTime(Now.Year, Now.Month, Now.Day, 23, 59, 59);

Answer 2

To get the last instant for today:

DateTime d = new DateTime(Now.Year, Now.Month, Now.Day);
d = d.AddDays(1);
d = d.AddTicks(-1);

---

In response to your edit, here's what I would do:

DateTime start = new DateTime(Now.Year, Now.Month, Now.Day);
DateTime end = start.AddDays(1).AddTicks(-1);

// Or - just use end = start.AddDays(1), and use a < for comparison

Answer 3

DateTime d = DateTime.Today.AddDays(1).AddTicks(-1);

Answer 4

DateTime startDate = DateTime.Today;
DateTime stopDate = startDate.AddDays(1).AddTicks(-1);

As a note, DateTime.Today returns (from MSDN)

A System.DateTime set to today's date, with the time component set to 00:00:00.

So as others have noted, add a day, then subtract the smallest time quantum (a tick), and you get the last possible time for the current day.

Of course, you might have to think about TimeZones and such depending where the code runs versus where the user is. UTC time might be good, but that might bump you off a day (either way) depending where your code runs.

Answer 5

Your question has already been answered, but IMHO a better way is not to bother attempting to subtract a tick, a second, or whatever from the end of the range, and compare using strictly less than.

So that if you want all dates in an inclusive range from startDate to endDate, ignoring the time, you could use the following in C#:

if ((myDate >= startDate.Date) && (myDate < endDate.Date.AddDays(1)))
{
    // ... it's in the range
}

or in T-SQL, assuming your @StartDate and @EndDate are exactly midnight, something like:

WHERE SomeDate >= @StartDate AND SomeDate < DATEADD(d,1,@EndDate)

UPDATE

Updated example to show an inclusive range in response to comments.