Introduction
The .Net frame work provides two value types for Date and Time in System namespace
They are
1. System.DateTime
2. System.TimeSpan
The DateTime value type has Dates with a range of 10000 years(12:00:00 midnight, January 1, 0001 AD to 11:59:59 P.M., December 31, 9999 A.D.) and a Time with a resolution of 100nano second(Ticks) .
The TimeSpan value represents a period of time and is expressed as a number of ticks(A Tick is 100 nano seconds).
What is the relation between DateTime and TimeSpan ?
It is very simple the difference between two DateTime values is expressed in a TimeSpan.
DateTime
Befor using DateTime you have to create an instance of it, it mainly contains 4 constructors(although total 7 constructors, but 3 are duplicates). The constructors allow you to initialize DateTime structure.
Eg:
DateTime today = new DateTime(2006,5,11,4,15,20);
we can convert DateTime value to string.
string date = today.ToString();
Some common methods of the DateTime structure are: Add, AddDays, AddHours, AddMinutes, AddMonths, AddSeconds, AddYears, DaysInMonth along with the various permuations of the ToString() overload for DateTime
TimeSpan
Suppose you date of Birth is 24th October 1983 , 7:15:00 Am now you want to find you age exactly i.e difference between you date of birth and today , how you will get?
As we discussed earlier the difference between two dates is TimeSpan , which is the relation between TimeSpan and DateTime.
See the following example , it will give your current age if you give you r date of birth as parameters.
DateTime birthday = new DateTime(1983,10,24,7,15,00);
DateTime today = DateTime.Now;
TimeSpan age = today - birthday;
Label1.Text = age.ToString();
Similarly we can also calculate TimeSpan between two times.
Let us see some examples of how to display dates in various formats using ToString()
DateTime.Now; 5/16/2006 1:05:13 AM
DateTime.Now.ToString(); 5/16/2006 1:05:13 AM
DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString() 11:40 AM
DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString() 5/16/2006
DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString() 11:40:13 AM
DateTime.Now.ToLongDateString() Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Examples of DateTime for Given Formats
DateTime.Now.ToString("dddd, MMMM dd yyyy") - Tuesday, May 16 2006
DateTime.Now.ToString("ddd, MMM d "'"yy") - Tue, May 16 '06
DateTime.Now.ToString("dddd, MMMM dd") - Tuesday, May 16
DateTime.Now.ToString("M/yy") - 5/06
DateTime.Now.ToString("dd-MM-yy") - 16-05-06
Summary
In this article we saw various Formats of Dates in System.DateTime and also learned about TimeSpan
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