Using DateTimeFormatInfo to localise date and time in .NET C#

Every programmer loves working with dates and time, right? Whether or not you like it it is inevitable to show the dates in a format that the viewer understands. You should not show dates presented according to the US format in Japan and vice versa.

The DateTimeFormatInfo class includes a range of useful properties to localise date and time. The entry point to the DateTimeFormatInfo class is CultureInfo. E.g. if you’d like to format a date according to various cultures – Swedish, Hungarian and German – then you can do it as follows:

CultureInfo swedishCulture = new CultureInfo("sv-SE");
DateTimeFormatInfo swedishDateFormat = swedishCulture.DateTimeFormat;

CultureInfo hungarianCulture = new CultureInfo("hu-HU");
DateTimeFormatInfo hungarianDateFormat = hungarianCulture.DateTimeFormat;

CultureInfo germanCulture = new CultureInfo("de-DE");
DateTimeFormatInfo germanDateFormat = germanCulture.DateTimeFormat;
			
DateTime utcNow = DateTime.UtcNow;

string formattedDateSweden = utcNow.ToString(swedishDateFormat.FullDateTimePattern);
string formattedDateHungary = utcNow.ToString(hungarianDateFormat.FullDateTimePattern);
string formattedDateGermany = utcNow.ToString(germanDateFormat.FullDateTimePattern);

…which yields the following formatted dates:

• den 12 juni 2014 20:08:30
• 2014. június 12. 20:08:30
• Donnerstag, 12. Juni 2014 20:08:30

DateTimeFormatInfo includes patterns for other types of date representations, such as MonthDayPattern, LongDatePattern etc.

You can also get the names of the days and months:

string[] swedishDays = swedishDateFormat.DayNames;
string[] germanDays = germanDateFormat.DayNames;
string[] hungarianDays = hungarianDateFormat.DayNames;

string[] swedishMonths = swedishDateFormat.MonthNames;
string[] hungarianMonths = hungarianDateFormat.MonthNames;
string[] germanMonths = germanDateFormat.MonthNames;

You can do a lot more with DateTimeFormatInfo:

• The Calendar associated with the culture
• The date separator
• Abbreviated month and day names
• First day of the week

…and more. I encourage you to inspect the available properties of the DateTimeFormatInfo object with IntelliSense in Visual Studio.

Read all posts related to Globalisation in .NET here.