Question

I have an TextBlock showing a date using the standard short date format for the current culture.

String.Format(culture, "{0:d}", someDate)

Now, the product manager wants the year highlighted in bold. At first, I thought it would be easy enough; have one run bound to the day/month-part, an a second to the year part.

<TextBlock>
  <Run Text="{Binding DayMonthPart}"/>
  <Run FontWeight="Bold" Text="{Binding YearPart}"/>
</TextBlock>

But that wont do, since different cultures have different ordering. Some put the year first, some put it last.

So, how can I make this happen?
Any ideas?

Answer 1

This is generic solution that works for all cultures:

var r = new Regex(@"^(?<first>[^y]*?)(?<year>y+)(?<second>[^y]*?)$");
var mc = r.Matches(info.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern);
var f = mc[0].Groups["first"].Value;
var y = mc[0].Groups["year"].Value;
var s = mc[0].Groups["second"].Value;

this.First = string.IsNullOrEmpty(f) ? string.Empty : this.date.ToString(f, info);
this.Year = this.date.ToString(y);
try
{
    this.Second = string.IsNullOrEmpty(s) ? string.Empty : this.date.ToString(s, info);           
}
catch
{
    // fallback: sometimes the last char is just a '.'
    this.Second = s;
}

And then in your XAML:

<TextBlock>
    <Run Text="{Binding First, Mode=OneWay}" />
    <Run FontWeight="Bold" Text="{Binding Year, Mode=OneWay}" />
    <Run Text="{Binding Second, Mode=OneWay}" />
</TextBlock>