We recently had a need to figure out how to subtract 7 days from a particular date and store it into a variable. What this turned into was an five day marathon of figuring out different ways of formatting dates using ASP.NET. This might seem a redundant but there are literals thousands of different ways of manipulating dates inside .NET. Here are my 17 ways I found along my adventure. Some people would say "find one way and just use it?". Not us, we decided to make this an adventure ...We recently had a need to figure out how to subtract 7 days from a particular date and store it into a variable. What this turned into was an five day marathon of figuring out different ways of formatting dates using ASP.NET. This might seem a redundant but there are literals thousands of different ways of manipulating dates inside .NET. Here are my 17 ways I found along my adventure. Some people would say "find one way and just use it?". Not us, we decided to make this an adventure and come up with a nice reference guide(for us anyway) if the occasion arises to format dates a certain way. We would suggest for anyone wanting to learn about .NET. Take about a week and just start out doing something with .NET and dig into documentation. If you find something new, learn about it and run with it for awhile. We did![bold]Sample Code[/bold]Contained inside each method are various code samples.- Various Ways of Subtracting Time from a Current Date
'Uses the AddDays method to subtract X number of days
Public Function Date2()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-7)
Dim s as string = NewTime
return s
End Function
'Thanks to Paul Czywczynski for this idea
'This probably (In My opinion) Offers the most flexibility found so far
'Change where the MM/dd/yyyy to whatever
'response.write(System.String.Format("{0:d}",NewTime))
'would return just the name of the Day
Function Date3()
Dim NewTime as DateTime = now.addDays(-7)
response.write(System.String.Format("{0:MM/dd/yyyy}",NewTime))
End Function
Function Date4()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = now.addDays(-7)
return NewTime.ToString()
End Function
- General Formatting Techniques
'Uses the toLongTimeString method
Public Function Date5()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = Now()
return newtime.toLongTimeString()
End Function
'Uses the toShortTimeString method
Public Function Date6()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = Now()
return newtime.toShortTimeString()
End Function
'Uses the toLongDateString method
Public Function Date7()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = Now()
return newtime.toLongDateString()
End Function
'Uses the toShortDateString method
Public Function Date8()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = Now()
return newtime.toShortDatestring()
End Function
- Using FormatDateTime Function
'Uses FormatDateTime function General format
Function Date9()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = DateTime.Now.Subtract( New TimeSpan(7, 0, 0, 0) )
return formatdatetime(NewTime, 0)
End Function
'Uses FormatDateTime function LongDate format
Function Date10()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = DateTime.Now.Subtract( New TimeSpan(7, 0, 0, 0) )
return formatdatetime(NewTime, 1)
End Function
'Uses FormatDateTime function ShortDate format
Function Date11()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = DateTime.Now.Subtract( New TimeSpan(7, 0, 0, 0) )
return formatdatetime(NewTime, 2)
End Function
'Uses FormatDateTime function LongTime format
Function Date12()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = DateTime.Now.Subtract( New TimeSpan(7, 0, 0, 0) )
return formatdatetime(NewTime, 3)
End Function
'Uses FormatDateTime function ShortTime format
Function Date13()
Dim NewTime as DateTime
NewTime = DateTime.Now.Subtract( New TimeSpan(7, 0, 0, 0) )
return formatdatetime(NewTime, 4)
End Function
- Display Specific parts of the Date(DAY, MONTH, TIME)
'Bring Back just the name of the Day
Function Date14()
Dim NewTime as DateTime = now.addDays(-7)
dim s as string
s = (System.String.Format("{0:dddd}",NewTime))
Return s
End Function
'Returns the Integer of what day of week
Function Date15()
Dim MyDate as DateTime
Dim MyWeekDay as Integer
MyDate = Now.AddDays(-5)
MyWeekDay = Weekday(MyDate)
return MyWeekDay
End Function
'Returns the Month Integer
Function Date16()
Dim MyDate as DateTime
Dim MyMonth as Integer
MyDate = Now.AddDays(-5)
MyMonth = Month(MyDate)
return MyMonth
End Function
'Returns just a formatted string
'This method provides just formatting but
'Very flexible with not a lot of code
Function Date17()
Dim MyDate as String
MyDate = Format(Now(), "yyyy")
return MyDate
End Function
</script>
[bold]Formatting Dates Reference Guide[/bold]----------------------------------------------------[bold]d[/bold]Short Date[bold]D[/bold]Long Date[bold]f[/bold]Full (long date + short time)[bold]F[/bold]Full (long date + long time)[bold]g[/bold]General (short date + short time)[bold]G[/bold]General (short date + long time)[bold]m, M[/bold]Month/Day Date[bold]r, R[/bold]RFC Standard[bold]s[/bold]Sortable without TimeZone info[bold]t[/bold]Short Time[bold]T[/bold]Long Time[bold]u[/bold]Universal with sort able format[bold]U[/bold]Universal with Full (long date + long time) format[bold]y, Y[/bold]Year/Month Date[bold]*Note:[bold] Some systems will not be able to get dates for 2-digit years of less than 1930.---------------------------------------------------- | DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
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