How do I get the AM/PM value from a DateTime?

Question

The code in question is below:

public static string ChangePersianDate(DateTime dateTime)
{
    System.Globalization.GregorianCalendar PC = new System.Globalization.GregorianCalendar();
    PC.CalendarType = System.Globalization.GregorianCalendarTypes.USEnglish;
    return
    PC.GetYear(dateTime).ToString()
    + "/"
    + PC.GetMonth(dateTime).ToString()
    + "/"
    + PC.GetDayOfMonth(dateTime).ToString()
    + ""
    + PC.GetHour(dateTime).ToString()
    + ":"
    + PC.GetMinute(dateTime).ToString()
    + ":"
    + PC.GetSecond(dateTime).ToString()
    + " "
    ????????????????
}

how can I get the AM/PM from the dateTime value?

Worked

There are far better ways to format a DateTime than this. See msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4.aspx – Parquet

Just use dateTime.ToString("tt"); – Kersey

Answer 1

How about:

dateTime.ToString("tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Variant

You need to add new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US") in order to get this right (if you are not already running the thread in a US context) – Vanessa

@Vanessa - Good point. Edited now to specify CultureInfo.InvariantCulture – Variant

ToString("tt", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture) – Transfusion

This for get AM/PM from date. But if I want to change AM to PM in any date. Then what should I do ? – Didst

@AjaySharma Just add 12 hours before the format evaluation. DateTime.Now.AddHours(12).ToString("tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture) – Underlying

Keep in mind that if you want to change PM to AM, you'd have to subtract 12 hours instead of adding it, assuming you want to preserve the same date. – Culpa

Answer 2

string.Format("{0:hh:mm:ss tt}", DateTime.Now)

This should give you the string value of the time. tt should append the am/pm.

You can also look at the related topic:

How do you get the current time of day?

Indiaindiaman

This should be be lower case hh as your current representation outputs in 24hr time with am and pm which is a bit pointless – Pilocarpine

@LukeMcGregor I've amended the answer as per your suggestion. – Zinkenite

I upvoted this answer and downvoted the accepted, because it didn't explain anything. This answer made sense, the other didn't. – Triplett

@Triplett lol, the accepted answer from nearly a decade before perfectly answers OP's question. They literally just had to cut'n'paste the answer into the space above the question marks. – Evaginate

Answered it but didn't explain it. Using "tt" and CultureInfo.InvariantCulture is not self-explanatory to a newcomer. Even a one-liner can have an explanation. – Triplett

Answer 3

Very simple by using the string format

on .ToString("") :

• if you use "hh" ->> The hour, using a 12-hour clock from 01 to 12.

• if you use "HH" ->> The hour, using a 24-hour clock from 00 to 23.

• if you add "tt" ->> The Am/Pm designator.

exemple converting from 23:12 to 11:12 Pm :

DateTime d = new DateTime(1, 1, 1, 23, 12, 0);
var res = d.ToString("hh:mm tt"); // this shows 11:12 PM
var res2 = d.ToString("HH:mm");   // this shows 23:12

Console.WriteLine(res);
Console.WriteLine(res2);

Console.Read();

wait a second that is not all you need to care about something else is the system Culture because the same code executed on windows with other langage especialy with difrent culture langage will generate difrent result with the same code

exemple of windows set to Arabic langage culture will show like that :

// 23:12 م

م means Evening (first leter of مساء) .

in another system culture depend on what is set on the windows regional and language option, it will show // 23:12 du.

you can change between different format on windows control panel under windows regional and language -> current format (combobox) and change... apply it do a rebuild (execute) of your app and watch what iam talking about.

so who can I force showing Am and Pm Words in English event if the culture of the >current system isn't set to English ?

easy just by adding two lines : ->

the first step add using System.Globalization; on top of your code

and modifing the Previous code to be like this :

DateTime d = new DateTime(1, 1, 1, 23, 12, 0);
var res = d.ToString("HH:mm tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); // this show  11:12 Pm

InvariantCulture => using default English Format.

another question I want to have the pm to be in Arabic or specific language, even if I use windows set to English (or other language) regional format?

Soution for Arabic Exemple :

DateTime d = new DateTime(1, 1, 1, 23, 12, 0);
var res = d.ToString("HH:mm tt", CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("ar-AE")); 

this will show // 23:12 م

event if my system is set to an English region format. you can change "ar-AE" if you want to another language format. there is a list of each language and its format.

exemples :

ar          ar-SA       Arabic
ar-BH       ar-BH       Arabic (Bahrain)
ar-DZ       ar-DZ       Arabic (Algeria)
ar-EG       ar-EG       Arabic (Egypt)

big list...

make me know if you have another question .

Sacking

If I want to see "11:12 PM"? I think your answer is incomplete. – Jubilation

Answer 4

The DateTime should always be internally in the "american" (Gregorian) calendar. So if you do

var str = dateTime.ToString(@"yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm:ss tt", new CultureInfo("en-US"));

you should get what you want in many less lines.

Hosier

Answer 5

I know this might seem to be extremely late.. however it may help someone out there

I wanted to get the AM PM part of the date, so I used what Andy advised:

dateTime.ToString("tt");

I used that part to construct a Path to save my files.. I built my assumptions that I will get either AM or PM and nothing else !!

however when I used a PC that its culture is not English ..( in my case ARABIC) .. my application failed becase the format "tt" returned something new not AM nor PM (م or ص)..

So the fix to this was to ignore the culture by adding the second argument as follow:

dateTime.ToString("tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

.. of course u have to add : using System.Globalization; on top of ur file I hope that will help someone :)

Vimineous

Thanks for adding this as it helped me today - I was getting A.M. on my dev environment and AM on remote server and there was not a huge amount of help from google with it until I read this post. Even Dotnetpearls states "There are no periods in the output of tt. If you require periods in your AM or PM, you would have to manipulate the string." Which of course was completely untrue in my case ... – Chook

Answer 6

its pretty simple

  Date someDate = new DateTime();
  string timeOfDay = someDate.ToString("hh:mm tt"); 
  // hh - shows hour and mm - shows minute - tt - shows AM or PM

Rickeyricki

Answer 7

+ PC.GetHour(datetime) > 11 ? "pm" : "am"

For your example but there are better ways to format datetime.

Biweekly

See the link that @Parquet has given above. Basically you can use to ToString method on the datetime object and pass it a format. This way you dont call datetime.ToString mulitple times as you are doing in your code example. – Biweekly

As ugly as this may seem, it is a far simpler and more consistent way than messing around with different cultures. For example many cultures show time in 24hrs and do not include AM/PM at all, and ToString("tt") produces an empty string. – Alidis

Answer 8

From: http://www.csharp-examples.net/string-format-datetime/

string.Format("{0:t tt}", datetime);  // -> "P PM"  or "A AM"

Odaniel

Answer 9

Something like bool isPM = GetHour() > 11. But if you want to format a date to a string, you shouldn't need to do this yourself. Use the date formatting functions for that.

Busse

Honestly, I wouldn't even show the isPM() method. THe only way to legitimately format DateTime objects is using the formatters. – Hinkle

@Hinkle I disagree. The only safe way is not to use am/pm at all and use 24h format, always append the invariant culture or doing it manually. "am" and "pm" are not filled in e.g. in German language, it's just empty. If somebody writes String.Format("{0:hh:mm tt}", DateTime.Now) they simply get wrong times – Shainashaine

Answer 10

@Andy's answer is Okay. But if you want to show time without 24 hours format then you may follow like this way

string dateTime = DateTime.Now.ToString("hh:mm:ss tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

After that, you should get time like as "10:35:20 PM" or "10:35:20 AM"

Flee

Answer 11

You can test it in this way

Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now.ToString("tt "));

The output will be like this:

AM

or

PM

Marmolada

Are you aware that you're using the code of the accepted answer? – Linette

Dear @ThomasAyoub, The code that is written is from a line of my project source. it is working right now. – Marmolada

Sorry, this is a very poor answer, especially because introducing Now – Tagliatelle

Answer 12

If you want to add time to LongDateString Date, you can format it this way:

    DateTime date = DateTime.Now;
    string formattedDate = date.ToLongDateString(); 
    string formattedTime = date.ToShortTimeString();
    Label1.Text = "New Formatted Date: " + formattedDate + " " + formattedTime;

Output:

New Formatted Date: Monday, January 1, 1900 8:53 PM 

Tightfisted

Answer 13

Another option is to change the default culture used to get the right formatting. The advantage is that the new format will be used throughout the code.

CultureInfo.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("Fr-fr");
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now.ToString("t")); // 14:08

var customCulture = (CultureInfo)CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Clone();
customCulture.DateTimeFormat.AMDesignator = "am";
customCulture.DateTimeFormat.PMDesignator = "pm";
customCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortTimePattern = "HH:mm tt";
CultureInfo.CurrentCulture = customCulture;

Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now.ToString("t")); // 14:08 pm

Koh

Answer 14

Here is an easier way you can write the time format (hh:mm:ss tt) and display them separately if you wish.

string time = DateTime.Now.Hour.ToString("00") + ":" + DateTime.Now.Minute.ToString("00") + ":" + DateTime.Now.Second.ToString("00") + DateTime.Now.ToString(" tt");

or just simply:

 DateTime.Now.ToString("hh:mm:ss tt")

Phyletic

Answer 15

string AM_PM = string.Format("{0:hh:mm:ss tt}", DateTime.Now).Split(new char[]{' '})[1];

Edveh