Display current date in a specific format in c#

Question

I am trying to display the current date (Today's date) in a specific format.

For example, "Package will be delivered this ___ day of ____________, _____ at the company shop." The output would be "Package will be delivered this (3) day of (October), (2022) at the company shop.". Any help is much appreciated thank you.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/custom-date-and-time-format-strings — Jodrell, Sep 29 '22 at 12:47
What are you having problems with? Finding Today? Getting the date components of a DateTime? String Formatting or String Concatenation? — gunr2171, Sep 29 '22 at 12:48
For example, `String.Format("Package will be delivered this ({0:dd}) day of ({0:MMMM}), ({0:YYYY}) at the company shop.",DateTime.Now)` — Panagiotis Kanavos, Sep 29 '22 at 12:49

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 29 '22 at 12:54

DateTime has everything you need:

DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
string s = $"Package will be delivered this {now.Day} day of {now:MMMM}, {now.Year} at the company shop.";

For the full month name i'm using the MMMM format specifier.

You can use custom format specifier for all, if you prefer:

string s = $"Package will be delivered this {now:dd} day of {now:MMMM}, {now:yyyy} at the company shop.";

Jodrell · Answer 2 · 2022-09-29T13:22:35.483

With this, from here,

string GetDaySuffix(int day) =>
day switch
{
    1 or 21 or 31 => "st",
    2 or 22 => "nd",
    3 or 23 => "rd",
    _ => "th",
};

You can do,

var now = DateTime.Now;
var legalDate = $"this {now:d}{GetDaySuffix(now.Day)} day of {now:MMMM}, {now:yyyy}";

Note,

The date suffix code is culture insensitive but since your text appears to be English in a British style I've assumed would both, like to suffix the day of the month and wouldn't need the suffix in a different language (if other cultures even do that?)

Madasir Ali · Answer 3 · 2023-07-28T16:49:06.413

Mine Solution is to use extension method, it will save some time in writing a wrapper method and passing date and time as input.

Result:

Package will be delivered this 29 day of 09, 2022 at the company shop.

As the execution will be as:

global using ExtensionMethods;

Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Today.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy").ToCustomDateFormat());

And the Extension Method will be:

namespace ExtensionMethods
{
    public static class MyExtensions
    {
        public static string ToCustomDateFormat(this string str)
        {
            string day = str.Substring(0, str.IndexOf('/'));
            string month = str.Substring(str.IndexOf('/') + 1, str.IndexOf('/', str.IndexOf('/')));
            string year = str.Substring(str.LastIndexOf('/') + 1, str.Length - str.LastIndexOf('/') - 1);

            string result = $"Package will be delivered this {day} day of {month}, {year} at the company shop.";

            return result;
        }
    }
}

Display current date in a specific format in c#

3 Answers3