Question

I have a DateTime object that I need to print in a custom gridlike control. The type of the data I want to print is a date in the format dd-mm-yyyy. This value can be either filled or blank. If it’s filled it will be parsed into a DateTime and then printed as the default ToString.

For each row, I can use

<CellTemplate>     <asp:Literal ID='Literal2' runat='server' Text='<%# Container.Value %>'></asp:Literal> </CellTemplate> 

But this prints the default long version of the date. I’d like the format from ToShortDateString().

So I tried modifying to:

<CellTemplate>     <asp:Literal ID='Literal2' runat='server' Text='<%# Convert.ToDateTime(Container.Value).ToShortTimeString()%>'></asp:Literal> </CellTemplate> 

This works as intended.

Now I have a problem with empty dates,

Convert.ToDateTime() 

On an empty string, it will print the default DateTime.

Is there a way that I can fashion an If-Statement in my aspx code, to only perform Convert.ToDateTime, if it’s not an empty string?

Answer 1

Container.Value.Length > 0 ? Convert.ToDateTime(Container.Value).ToShortTimeString() : '' 

You should also be able to pass Container.Value to any method in scope that you’ve defined.