Question

I want to get the date value for

Nov 1, 2010 00:00:00 GMT

expressed in my local time.

What is the best way? Currently, I am doing this:

    Dim NovGmt As Date = New Date(2010, 11, 1, 0, 0, 0)
    Dim Nov1AsLocal As Date = GetGmtExpressedAsLocal(NovGmt)



   Private Function GetGmtExpressedAsLocal(ByVal gmtDate As Date) As Date
        Return gmtDate.AddMinutes(GetMinuteOffsetFromGmt)
    End Function

   Private Function GetMinuteOffsetFromGmt() As Double

       Dim NowTime As Date = Now
       Dim NowAsGmt As Date = NowTime.ToUniversalTime

       Return CType(DateDiff(DateInterval.Minute, NowAsGmt, NowTime), Double)

   End Function

Also, can somebody tell me difference between the Date and DateTime datatypes? Is DateTime newer than Date or is it just a synonym for Date? If the latter, why have both?

Answer 1

You can use the ToLocalTime to convert a DateTime from UTC to the local timezone.

Date is an alias for DateTime. I presume this was done for backward compatibility reasons.