Question

I have following Date Time in my database. If my current system Date time is “2012-11-24 03:50:00.000”, then there should be output as 3rd record. How can I get it by linq query?

1   2012-11-24 01:00:00.000 35466   True    False
2   2012-11-24 01:00:00.000 35466   True    False
3   2012-11-24 01:15:00.000 35466   True    False
4   2012-11-23 01:10:00.000 65456   True    False

Answer 1

If you don’t absolutely have to do the query server-side, then the following pseudocode method will work:

  foreach value in the data set
        let distance = absolute value of ( data point - target data value )

  sort by distance, ascending

  choose first

In C#, you can calculate time intervals easily with the DateTime.Substract method, and take the absolute value of the returned TimeSpan object’s Days property, for example.

I am not too expert with SQL date manipulation, but I believe you can do the same sort of thing server side with something similar to:

  select * from table, abs(Datediff(datecolumn.table, sysdatetime)) as distance
  order by distance 

and then use the first value.

Sorry, I just noticed you want it in LINQ format, which lets you combine server side and client side work–something similar to this:

(from q in datacontext.Table
let distance = Math.Abs(q.Date.Subtract(DateTime.Today).Ticks)
orderby distance
select q).First();