Parsing a DateTime instance

Question

I got a class with some time utility methods. Now I need to add to that a method the does the following:

    public static string LastUpdated(DateTime date)
    {
        string result = string.Empty;

        //check if date is sometime "today" and display it in the form "today, 2 PM"
        result = "today, " + date.ToString("t");

        //check if date is sometime "yesterday" and display it in the form "yesterday, 10 AM"
        result = "yesterday, " + date.ToString("t");

        //check if the day is before yesterday and display it in the form "2 days ago"
        result = ... etc;

        return result;
    }

Any ideas?

Looks like you are on the right track. What specifically is holding you up? — Ryan Bennett, Apr 29 '11 at 17:37

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

3

I answered a similar question a while back and posted an extension method:

Calculating relative dates using asp.net mvc

Original source link

edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

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answered Apr 29 '11 at 17:39

Kelsey

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That is not what I really wanted. I already have a similar function, but yours is a little bit better so I replaced mine with yours. Thank you :) – Kassem Apr 29 '11 at 19:10

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

2

Take a look at this:

Calculate relative time in C#

This is how they do in StackOverflow. It should get you in some good direction.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

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answered Apr 29 '11 at 17:36

Adriano Carneiro

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marcoaoteixeira · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-29T18:39:11.190

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Well...you can do this...

if (date.Date == DateTime.Today) {
    result = "today, " + date.ToString("t");
} else if (date.Date.Day == DateTime.Today.AddDays(-1).Day) {
    result = "yesterday, " + date.ToString("t");
} else {
    result = (new TimeSpan(DateTime.Now.Ticks).Days - new TimeSpan(date.Ticks).Days) + " days ago";
}

Hope it helps.

edited Apr 29 '11 at 18:39

answered Apr 29 '11 at 17:41

marcoaoteixeira

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I believe that should do the job. Thank you :) – Kassem Apr 29 '11 at 19:11

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 29 '11 at 17:44

You can calculate the time difference between the date and the coming midnight, and get it as whole days. From that it's easy to translate it into a human readable text:

int days = Math.Floor((DateTime.Today.AddDays(1) - date).TotalDays);
switch (days) {
  case 0: return "today, " + date.ToString("t");
  case 1: return "yesterday, " + date.ToString("t");
  default: return days.ToString() + " days ago";
}

Note: The switch doesn't handle future dates. You would have to check for negative values for that.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 29 '11 at 17:39

I'm not going to code this for you, but I will say that you should look at the TimeSpan class, and also take a look at the Custom Date and Time Formatting page on MSDN, which hilights how you can use .ToString() with a DateTime object.

You should check if the date is greater than 1 day old (or 2, or 3 or whatever) and then return the appropriate string.

Parsing a DateTime instance

5 Answers5