Question

I have come across a strange problem. MY app has been localized to support 5 languages.
It is a calendar sort of app, and i have an option of writing notes for a particular date.
So when I change my language settings to Russian, enter a note on a date, eg 1/3/2012 and on 6/3/2012. This date and note is stored in an IsolatedStorageFile and i exit the app.

Now, I change my language settings to english, and the notes are stored in 3/1/2012 and 3/6/2012. The month and date are reversed !! 🙁

This is how i write the notes to the file

using (IsolatedStorageFileStream fileStream = storagefile.OpenFile("NotesFile", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.ReadWrite))
{
    StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(fileStream);

    for (int i = 0; i < m_noteCount; i++)
    {
        writer.Write(m_arrNoteDate[i].ToShortDateString());
        writer.Write(" ");
        writer.Write(m_arrNoteString[i]);
        writer.WriteLine("~`");
    }
    writer.Close();
}

Reading is from file is done like this

if (notes.Substring(i, 1) == " ")
{
      m_arrNoteString[count] = notes.Substring(i + 1);
      string temp = notes.Substring(0, i);
      m_arrNoteDate[count] = DateTime.Parse(temp);
      count++;
      nextCharacter = (char)reader.Read();
      notes = "";
      break;
}

the parser reads date in a format according to language the device is set to? Any work arounds?

Alfah

Answer 1

By default, the conversion between dates and strings (and vice versa) uses the current culture. For your purpose, since you are not converting to/from strings for the purpose of displaying dates to the user but to persist them, you should make your logic independent of the current culture by specifying a given culture. And the invariant culture is your best best.

So replace this:

writer.Write(m_arrNoteDate[i].ToShortDateString());

With this:

writer.Write(m_arrNoteDate[i].ToString("d", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

And replace this:

m_arrNoteDate[count] = DateTime.Parse(temp);

With this:

m_arrNoteDate[count] = DateTime.Parse(temp, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);