Question

I am developing an application using ASP.NET (C#) and SQLServer 2008. In my database i have a field DepositDate and datatype is “DATE”. On my data entry form i am taking dates using jquery datepicker and its returning date in textbox as dd/mm/yyyy format as per user requirement whereas i noticed in database its keeping date values as yyyy-mm-dd..i am confused.

While saving record i am getting not a valid date time as the only available conversion format is Convert.ToDateTime and my data requirement is DATE only.

Can anyone suggest solution how to deal with it.?

here is the code

       DateTime thedate = DateTime.Parse(txt_IDate.Text);
       DateTime mdate = DateTime.Parse(txt_Mdate.Text);

       db.AddInParameter(cmd, "@SIssueDate", System.Data.DbType.Date);
       db.SetParameterValue(cmd, "@SIssueDate", thedate.ToShortDateString());

       db.AddInParameter(cmd, "@SMaturityDate", System.Data.DbType.DateTime);
       db.SetParameterValue(cmd, "@SMaturityDate", mdate.ToShortDateString());

Answer 1

Why are you setting the parameter values to strings in the first place? Just use the DateTime values themselves:

db.AddInParameter(cmd, "@SIssueDate", DbType.Date);
db.SetParameterValue(cmd, "@SIssueDate", thedate);

db.AddInParameter(cmd, "@SMaturityDate", DbType.DateTime);
db.SetParameterValue(cmd, "@SMaturityDate", mdate);

I doubt that your database is storing the values in any particular string format… they’re not strings, they’re dates. It’s like asking whether a database stores an integer in a hex or decimal format… it just stores the number.

Basically, you need to parse the user’s input data in the appropriate format coming in (which presumably you’re already doing) and then format it again when you fetch it. Aside from the presentation layer, you should only ever think of it as a date value, without any associated format.

It may be helpful to imagine two users from different countries, who each view a list of dates. The would each want to see those dates in a format appropriate for their culture – so they may see different representations, but they’d be seeing the same actual dates.