Question

I want to get records from sql server 2005 in datetime format like this “dd/mm/yyyy h:m:s”

My database date is default datetime format

AttLogId int
...
DownloadLog datetime

I am trying to retrieve the datetime like this:

SELECT AttLogId ,convert(varchar,DownloadLogDate,103) FROM  AttLog
ORDER BY DownloadLogDate

but I only get the date and not the time.

Answer 1

I suggest you don’t try to get the values in a particular string format. Fetch them as DateTime values and then format them in the .NET code using DateTime.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy H:m:s").

It’s almost always worth keeping data in its “natural” data type (date/time here) for as long as possible, only converting to text when you really need to. So your SQL should just be:

SELECT AttLogId, DownloadLogDate FROM  AttLog
ORDER BY DownloadLogDate

How you then retrieve the data will depend on how you’re talking to SQL (e.g. LINQ to SQL, using SqlDbReader etc). But you should be able to get it as a DateTime and then format it locally. This will make it easier to test, easier to debug, give you more control over cultural aspects (date separators, possibly specifying a standard specifier instead of a custom one, etc).