Question

Relatively new Windows Phone developer here, looking for some help. Basically I’m messing around with an app that I’m looking to eventually put on the marketplace.

Basically the app is counting down to a specific date, I’ve got the countdown working with no problems, however i do have a problem with the date format as I’m in the UK and the date format is dd/MM/yyyy whereas the states is MM/dd/yyyy. So the app goes into negative figures for anyone in the US. Basically i need help with some sort of workaround, whether it’s setting a universal date format for my app or something like that. Here is the code for the countdown:

        DateTime startDate = DateTime.Now;
        var launch = DateTime.Parse("01/08/2012 00:00:00 AM");
        TimeSpan t = launch - startDate;

        Countdown.Text = string.Format("\r {0}\r Days \r {1}\r Hours \r {2}\r Minutes \r {3}\r Seconds", t.Days, t.Hours, t.Minutes, t.Seconds);

Answer 1

If you’re hard-coding the date, then you should use the DateTime(int,int,int) constructor, rather than parsing it from a string. The three parameters would always be interpreted as year, month, day (in that order).

var launch = new DateTime(2012, 08, 11);