How can I find the current time as a long in C#?

Question

I have this Java code, and I want to do the same thing in C#:

long now =System.currentTimeMillis()/1000;

Answer 1

Ticks maybe?

Answer 2

Having checked what java returns (1970/1/1 etc):

static readonly DateTime epoch=new DateTime(1970,1,1,0,0,0,DateTimeKind.Utc);
...
long ms = (long)(DateTime.UtcNow - epoch).TotalMilliseconds;
long result = ms / 1000;

Answer 3

currenTimeMillis gives the number of milliseconds since 1. Jan 1970, so if you need the exact same answer you want something like:

((DateTime.Now - new DateTime(1970,1,1)).TotalMilliseconds) / 1000

Answer 4

There's no direct equivalent to this in C# (and by that I mean in a single line), but assuming you just want something functionally similar, but not necessarily the Java implementation you can use:

DateTime.Now.Ticks;

Ticks are:

The value of this property represents the number of 100-nanosecond intervals that have elapsed since 12:00:00 midnight, January 1, 0001, which represents DateTime.MinValue.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.ticks.aspx

And this may not be relevant to you at all, but getting time in ticks/ms is often used for microbenchmarks to measure how long something takes in your code, and C# has a better class for that, namely Stopwatch. It's easier to use and more accurate too.

Use it like:

Stopwatch s = Stopwatch.StartNew();
s.Stop();
Console.Write(s.Elapsed);

This may not be what you're trying to do, but useful to know anyway.