Question

In an ASP.NET page I have this:

<asp:Label ID="MyDateTimeLabel" runat="server" 
     Text='<%# Eval("MyDateTime") %>' />

I’d like to have it formatted like

... Eval("MyDateTime", "{0:d}") ... // Display only the date

if and only if the time part of MyDateTime is 00:00:00. Otherwise like this:

... Eval("MyDateTime", "{0:g}") ... // Display date and time in hh:mm format

Is this possible and how can I do that?

Thank you for hints in advance!

Answer 1

I’d put this in my code-behind:

// This could use a better name!
protected string FormatDateHideMidnight(DateTime dateTime) {
    if (dateTime.TimeOfDay == TimeSpan.Zero) {
        return dateTime.ToString("d");
    } else {
        return dateTime.ToString("g");
    }
}

And change the .aspx to call that:

<asp:Label ID="MyDateTimeLabel" runat="server" 
     Text='<%# FormatDateHideMidnight((DateTime)Eval("MyDateTime")) %>' />

If you do this in multiple places, consider writing an extension method for DateTime and put this logic there (perhaps with additional parameters to supply different formats, etc.).