Localizing Date and Time Display in ASP.NET

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Introduction

Date and time information is used in almost every application I write and depending on the business requirements, it may be displayed in one of the following formats; short date, long date, short date time, long date time, etc. This isn't unique by any means, but the method used to format the display of date and time will impact the globalization and localization of your application.

As defined in the MSDN documentation, globalization is the processing of designing and developing applications that function for multiple cultures and localization is the process of customizing application for a given culture and locale. This post is limited to how to localize the display of dates and times in your applications.

Consider for a moment a DataTime object that is initialized to March 9th 2008 12:00 AM. The default ShortDatePattern for the U.S. is M/d/yyyy which displays this date as 3/9/2008. Now consider a user who is accustomed to the ShortDatePattern of d/M/yyyy. Most likely the date in this example will be interpreted as September 3, 2008. This ambiguity can be avoided if you also specify the appropriate CultureIno.

Culture Info

The CultureInfo class contains culture-specific details such as language and sublanguage and also contains objects that contain culture specific information for performing operations such formatting the display of dates, time and numeric values as well as the sorting of strings. The scope of this post is limited to formatting dates and times. You can find a full list of culture names and identifiers in the

There are three types of cultures: invariant, neutral and specific. The invariant culture is culture-insensitive and is associated with the English language but it is not associated with a specific country/region. The neural culture is associated with a language but not a country/region. The specific culture is associated with a language and a country/region.

DateTimeFormatInfo

This class defines how date and times are formatted for a specific culture, but it cannot be used for neutral cultures. There is a set a predefined single character date and time format characters that should meet most of your formatting needs. It is important to note that these format characters are case-sensitive and there cannot contain any white-spaces.

Figure 1

I know at least three ways to use the standard format characters. The format character can be replaced with any format characters listed in Figure 1.

string currentDate1 = DateTime.Now.ToString("d");

string currentDate2 = string.Format("{0:d}", DateTime.Now); 

string currentDate3 = string.Format("{0}", DateTime.Now.ToString("d"));        

In the code snippet above, the culture will default to Regional and Language Options of web server. This is not the behavior you would want if the website or application is used by users from multiple cultures. In order to format the date appropriately you must specify the appropriate instance of the CultureInfo object.

string currentDate1 = DateTime.Now.ToString("d", 
    CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("it-IT"));
string currentDate2 = string.Format(CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("it-IT"),
     "{0:d}", DateTime.Now);
string currentDate3 = string.Format("{0}", 
    DateTime.Now.ToString("d", CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture ("it-IT")));

In this code snippet, the culture is explicitly set to the Italian language and a country/region of Italy.

Figure 2

We have yet to solve the problem. How do we know what is the user’s preferred language? The answer is contained within the UserLanguages property of the HttpRequest object. This property returns a string array of client language preferences and first element of this array should be considered the preferred language.

private string[] 
languages;protected override void InitializeCulture()
{ languages = Request.UserLanguages;
   if (languages !=null)
   {
      Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = 
    CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(languages[0]);
   }
}

Figure 3

In IE 7 it is located under Tools | Options and click the languages, and add the desired language. The preferred language is the first item in the list.

In Fire Fox it is located under Tool | Advanced, click Choose and add the desired language.

The InitializeCulure() method is invoked before any of the controls are separated. By resetting the current thread’s culture you will insure that this setting in uniformly set across the entire page; however you not required to do so.

For this example, you will have to add at least one additional language in your preferred browser.

Custom Formatting

%M or M	Displays the month number without a leading zero. The ‘%’indicator should be omitted if combined with other format characters.
MM	Displays the month with a leading zero.
MMM	Displays the abbreviated month name.
MMMM	Displays the full month name.
%d or d	Displays the day without a leading zero. The ‘%’ indicator should be omitted if combined with other format characters.
dd	Displays the day with a leading a zero.
ddd	Displays the day names abbreviation.
dddd	Displays the full day name.
yy	Displays a two digit year without the century.
yyyy	Displays the four digit year.
y and yyy	Are valid format characters, however not much practical use.
%h or h	Displays the hour without aleading zero using the 12 hour clock. The ‘%’ indicator should be omitted if combined with other format characters.
hh	Displays the hour with a leading zero using the 12 hour clock.
%H or H	Displays the hour without a leading zero using the 24 hour clock. The ‘%’ indicator should be omitted if combined with other format characters.
HH	Displays the hour with a leading zero using the 24 hour clock.
%m or m	Displays the minute without a leading. The ‘%’ indicator should be omitted if combined with other format characters.
mm	Displays the minute with a leading zero
%s or s	Displays the second without a leading. The ‘%’ indicator should be omitted if combined with other format characters.
ss	Displays the second with a leading zero.
tt	The full AM/PM designator
%t or t	The first character of the AM/PM designator

If you need more precision when displaying time, there are additional fractions of a second formats which you can find listed in the

MSDN documentation. When creating custom formats be sure not to inadvertently a situation where there can be ambiguity

Conclusion

If you are currently developing applications for a single culture then using the default culture will meet your needs; however if your applications or websites are available on the Internet then you should localize the display of date to use your user’s preferred language.

History

05/02/2008 - Created

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Best Localization Plug-in for Visual Studio. Alexander Nesterenko 22:47 17 Dec '08   Move strings from code to resx and translate their automatically. Try RGreatEx[^] free. --- Best regards, Alexander Nesterenko Safe Develop Team www.safedevelop.com Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink i need to fix date format problem NiN9E 4:25 13 May '08   nice article but i have question my site is support 2 language (Arabic and English) and MSSQL2005 accept only US format (month/Day/Year) I've register form when user reg in English no problem but in Arabic i got error Arabic format is (day/month/year) when i make datetime.parse then Arabic working fine but English not working ? what can i do? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: i need to fix date format problem Anthony Leuzzi 6:16 13 May '08   This sounds like the culture info is still not being set correctly so I have a some follow-up questions. 1. I understood you to say the default language setting for SQL Server is English correct? 2. Do you get errors when the month and dates are interchangeable? 1/2/2008, 2/1/2008, 3/5/2008? Is this thrown by SQLServer or by .NET. Will you provide the full error message? 3. What is the Regional and Language settings of the web server. 4. Can you provide a snippet of the code? Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: i need to fix date format problem NiN9E 7:58 13 May '08   Hi Anthony Leuzzi thanks for ur reply 1-yes english is default for SQL 2-Error msg come from SQLSERVER: The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range datetime value. .Net SqlClient Data Provider 3-i don't know about web server lang but i think english also. you can try this ur self to see the error go to this link http://cms.cyberiahosting.ca/sitemanager/login.aspx[^] and use Demo/Demo as user name and pwd then choose english language then click on the Article Setting tab then click to the small calender for Entry Date and choose 5/21/2008(day must be greater than 12 to get the error) but in arabic it's working fine to open arabic page use default lang in dropdown list in login page // Sql += "EntryDate ='" + GMDP_ArticleEntryDate.Date.ToShortDateString() + "' and "; Sql += "EntryDate =CONVERT(datetime, '" + GMDP_ArticleEntryDate.Date.ToShortDateString() + "', 103) and "; // string.Format(txtDate.Text, "mm/dd/yyyy") // Sql += "EntryDate ='" + string.Format(GMDP_ArticleEntryDate.Date.ToShortDateString(), "mm/dd/yyyy") + "' and "; //Sql += "EntryDate ='" + DateTime.Parse(GMDP_ArticleEntryDate.Date.ToShortDateString()) + "' and "; the problem with this if i change the format: one lang work and other failed and vice versa if u need more info i can give u i'm sorry for this long msg Thanks Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Re: i need to fix date format problem Anthony Leuzzi 9:14 13 May '08   From what I can tell from just using the site, the default date format seems to be “dd/MM/yyyy” even though I have selected English. I would stay away from using quoted strings in your SQL statements. This can subject your site to SQL Injection attacks. If you are not familiar with this term, there are lots of articles that discuss this topic in great detail. I presume you assigned GMDP_ArticleEntryDate based on the value of the server control field for EntryDate. txtArticleEntryDate.Text. I am curious what this statement returns GMDP_ArticleEntryDate.Date.ToShortDateString() Add Simple Response.Write(GMDP_ArticleEntryDate.Date.ToShortDateString()) to see what the format is. I think the piece that you may be missing is the way you assign the EntryDate Textbox value to your DateTime variable. You must specify the culture based on the language selected. In my example, the cmbCulture.SelectedValue is the selected culture code, “en-US” for example. I would also suggest using parameterized SQL statements instead of quoted strings. DateTime theDateValue = DateTime.Parse(txtDateValue.Text, new CultureInfo(cmbCulture.SelectedValue)); string connectionString = "Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=IMDB;Integrated Security=True"; SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(connectionString); SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(); cmd.Connection = con; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; cmd.CommandText = "Insert dbo.TestTable (UserDate) values(@UserDate)"; cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@UserDate", theDateValue); // add any additional parameters con.Open(); cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); You SQL statement may look something like this. You will need to supply add any additional parameters. "… EntryDate = @EntryDate …” Let me know if this helps Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Useful Murat Firat 23:38 3 May '08   A useful reference for date time formatting. Thanks. Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink Nice Article RazanPaul 22:10 3 May '08   You have kicked a awesome thing.Your presentation is clear and unambiguous. Razan Paul Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink

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