Convert Date to Milliseconds

Question

I am working with Visual Studio 2010, MVC 3 and C#. I am creating some highcharts and need to have the x-axis be a date. I am pulling the dates from a database and adding them to and array that will then be passed to highcharts. I think highcharts requires the dates to be in millisecond format. Ho do I go about converting a DateTime of '12/20/2011 5:10:13 PM" for example to milliseconds?

Do you mean you need the `DateTime` value in Unix epoch format, as described [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8700823/datetime-format-from-unix-epoch)? — Oded, Mar 15 '12 at 16:46
What do you mean by millisecond format? The number of milliseconds elapsed since the Unix epoch? Since 01/01/0001? — Kendall Frey, Mar 15 '12 at 16:47

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 15 '12 at 16:48

21

Once you figure out what you want to calculate milliseconds from, you can just take one DateTime object from another to get a TimeSpan object. From TimeSpan you can get TotalMilliseconds.

In other words, if start and end are DateTime objects, you can do this:

double milliseconds = (end - start).TotalMilliseconds;

answered Mar 15 '12 at 16:48

Matt Burland

44,552
18
99
171

I am not quite sure yet what I want to calculate milliseconds from. I just know that I can't pass a DateTime object to HighCharts. For data it only accepts Number values. I tested your solution out and it appears to work. I received a couple of acceptable answers. However, I think yours is the cleanest and easiest to use. Thanks for the help. – Linger Mar 15 '12 at 21:03

score 12 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

You can use the DateTime.Ticks property and convert the value to milliseconds.

The value of this property represents the number of 100-nanosecond intervals that have elapsed since 12:00:00 midnight, January 1, 0001, which represents DateTime.MinValue. It does not include the number of ticks that are attributable to leap seconds.

A single tick represents one hundred nanoseconds or one ten-millionth of a second. There are 10,000 ticks in a millisecond.

Ifesinachi Bryan · Answer 3 · 2018-04-22T19:08:35.653

7

The .Ticks in C# DateTime gives you the value of any time in ticks. You can thereafter convert to milliseconds as shown below:

long dateticks = DateTime.Now.Ticks;
long datemilliseconds = dateticks / TimeSpan.TicksPerMillisecond;

edited Apr 22 '18 at 19:08

answered Nov 19 '17 at 22:12

Ifesinachi Bryan

2,240
1
19
20

Please test your code before you post. I fixed simple errors in your code. – Enigmativity Apr 22 '18 at 01:51
The correct way to do this would be `long datemilliseconds = dateticks / TimeSpan.TicksPerMillisecond;`. Don't use magic numbers. – Enigmativity Apr 22 '18 at 01:53

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 15 '12 at 16:46

1

DateTime[] dates = ;

var minDate = dates.Min();

var msDates = dates.Select(date => (date - minDate).TotalMilliseconds).ToArray();

answered Mar 15 '12 at 16:46

Serj-Tm

16,581
4
54
61

This was my assumption as well that a minimum reference date is required. – ChaosPandion Mar 15 '12 at 16:48

Convert Date to Milliseconds

4 Answers4

Linked

Related