Formatting Dates
I am forgetful regarding the formatting of dates in .NET. For example, I will try to put in something like "MM/DD/YYYY" and will get out something like "06/MM/YYYY." As my head slaps my forehead on this issue, I then remember that string formatting is case sensitive and I need to use something like "MM/dd/yyyy" to get my desired result. Check here for the common string formatting expressions. Thanks to Steve Tibbett for this info. Steve has some other good formatting info in his article on his blog. I have gone ahead and copied over the date formats for my reference (not trying to steal info).
| Specifier | Type | Example (Passed System.DateTime.Now) |
| d | Short date | 10/12/2002 |
| D | Long date | December 10, 2002 |
| t | Short time | 10:11 PM |
| T | Long time | 10:11:29 PM |
| f | Full date & time | December 10, 2002 10:11 PM |
| F | Full date & time (long) | December 10, 2002 10:11:29 PM |
| g | Default date & time | 10/12/2002 10:11 PM |
| G | Default date & time (long) | 10/12/2002 10:11:29 PM |
| M | Month day pattern | December 10 |
| r | RFC1123 date string | Tue, 10 Dec 2002 22:11:29 GMT |
| s | Sortable date string | 2002-12-10T22:11:29 |
| u | Universal sortable, local time | 2002-12-10 22:13:50Z |
| U | Universal sortable, GMT | December 11, 2002 3:13:50 AM |
| Y | Year month pattern | December, 2002 |
The ‘U’ specifier seems broken; that string certainly isn’t sortable.
Custom date formatting:
| Specifier | Type | Example | Example Output |
| dd | Day | {0:dd} | 10 |
| ddd | Day name | {0:ddd} | Tue |
| dddd | Full day name | {0:dddd} | Tuesday |
| f, ff, … | Second fractions | {0:fff} | 932 |
| gg, … | Era | {0:gg} | A.D. |
| hh | 2 digit hour | {0:hh} | 10 |
| HH | 2 digit hour, 24hr format | {0:HH} | 22 |
| mm | Minute 00-59 | {0:mm} | 38 |
| MM | Month 01-12 | {0:MM} | 12 |
| MMM | Month abbreviation | {0:MMM} | Dec |
| MMMM | Full month name | {0:MMMM} | December |
| ss | Seconds 00-59 | {0:ss} | 46 |
| tt | AM or PM | {0:tt} | PM |
| yy | Year, 2 digits | {0:yy} | 02 |
| yyyy | Year | {0:yyyy} | 2002 |
| zz | Timezone offset, 2 digits | {0:zz} | -05 |
| zzz | Full timezone offset | {0:zzz} | -05:00 |
| : | Separator | {0:hh:mm:ss} | 10:43:20 |
| / | Separator | {0:dd/MM/yyyy} | 10/12/2002 |