Question

Im having diffculty with datetime when its displayed client side from my rest web service, my client side wpf app code looks like this:

    public MainWindow()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        string uriGroups = "http://localhost:8000/Service/Student";
        XDocument xDoc = XDocument.Load(uriGroups);

        foreach(var node in xDoc.Descendants("Student"))
        {

            GroupBox groupbox = new GroupBox();
            groupbox.Header = String.Format(node.Element("StudentID").Value);
            groupbox.Width = 100;
            groupbox.Height = 100;
            groupbox.Margin = new Thickness(2);

            TextBlock textBlock = new TextBlock();
            textBlock.Text = String.Format(node.Element("FirstName").Value + " " + (node.Element("LastName").Value));
            textBlock.TextAlignment = TextAlignment.Center;

            TextBlock textBlock1 = new TextBlock();
            textBlock1.Text = String.Format(node.Element("TimeAdded").Value);
            textBlock1.TextAlignment = TextAlignment.Center;
            textBlock1.VerticalAlignment = VerticalAlignment.Bottom;

            StackPanel stackPanel = new StackPanel();
            stackPanel.Children.Add(groupbox);

            stackPanel.Children.Add(textBlock);
            stackPanel.Children.Add(textBlock1);
            stackPanel.Margin = new Thickness(10);

            MainArea.Children.Add(stackPanel);
        }

    }

And my service looks like this:

public class Student
{
    ....
            public DateTime TimeAdded;
        public string TimeAddedString
        {
            get
            {
                return this.TimeAdded.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss");
            }
        }

But the output looks like this:

Is there a way on my client side app code to truncate this or reformat it?

Answer 1

You can cast it to a DateTime and then use String.Format

Here is an example with one format you could use:

String.Format("{0:M/d/yyyy}", ((DateTime)node.Element("TimeAdded").Value))

You can also use DateTime.ToString(FORMAT)

((DateTime)node.Element("TimeAdded").Value).ToString("d");

I have made an assumption that .Value returns an object, but if it returns a DateTime then you can drop the casts.

If you are getting a string into your client, then you will need to use DateTime.Parse

(DateTime.Parse(node.Element("TimeAdded").Value)).ToString("d");
String.Format("{0:M/d/yyyy}", DateTime.Parse(node.Element("TimeAdded").Value))