Formatting numerals and dates in other locales in C#/.NET

Question

In an application I'm writing I want to display the current date and time, in English, but also in other locales.

For example Russian, Arabic and Chinese.

// DateTime.ToLongDateString doesn't support a IFormatProvider parameter
DateTime.Now.ToString("dddd, d MMMM, yyyy", new CultureInfo("en-US"));
// "Wednesday, 7 August, 2013"

DateTime.Now.ToString("dddd, d MMMM, yyyy 'r.'", new CultureInfo("ru-RU"));
// "среда, 7 августа, 2013 r."

Works fine...

DateTime.Now.ToString("dddd٫ d MMM٫ yyyy", new CultureInfo("ar"));
// "الأربعاء٬ 30 رمضان٬ 1434"

Seems to work fine.

However... I'd like to show the numerals as (Eastern) Arabic numerals, not as Latin/Arabic numerals. Though this could of course be solved by doing a simple substitution ('٠‎' to '0', 1 to '١' etc).

But then there's Chinese:

DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy年M月d日dddd", new CultureInfo("zh-CN"))
// "2013年8月7日星期三"

Chinese numerals seem to be quite a bit more complex than just doing a simple substitution; sometimes one character becomes 2. Next to that, The formatted date seems to show the current Gregorian date, not the current Chinese date.

So my question is:

A) Is there any localization functionality in .NET/C# to display numbers (specificly dates) in other numeralsystems?

B) Can i force .NET/C# to display dates in the Chinese (and possibly Japanese and other) calendars, as it seems to do with the Arabic calendar?

Caudex

(new CultureInfo("zh-CN")).Calendar is Gregorian, you may need a custom CultureInfo. – Nolin

Number substitution works like this: (1) various ToString functions return standard (0-9) numbers; (2) when displaying the string in number substitution-enabled host (e.g., in a WPF window), the numbers are displayed in a national script transparently for you (BUT the thread's culture must be set to the national one), see this question; (3) this features works currently for Arabic, Hindi and Thai languages only, so no automatic way for Chinese classic numerals. – Leviticus

Answer 1

Play with ToLongDateString()

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("zh-CN");
var myDate = DateTime.Now.ToLongDateString();

value for myDate: 2013年8月7日

Bah

Don't forget to save the previous culture and put it back afterwards, or strange things could start happening... :) – Caudex

Answer 2

See these questions (and answers):

• String.Format not converting integers correctly in arabic

• How can I display culture-specific native digits instead of Arabic numerals?

• MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.digitshapes.aspx

As to whether that will work with all languages? ...I wouldn't bet on it, especially in cultures like that of China where there are multiple ways and context-sensitive usage.

Amery

I can't seem to get this to work :( CultureInfo Arabic = new CultureInfo("ar"); Arabic.NumberFormat.DigitSubstitution = DigitShapes.NativeNational; DateTime.Now.ToString("dddd٬ d MMM٬ yyyy", Arabic); // "الأربعاء٬ 30 رمضان٬ 1434" strangly enough: string.Format(Arabic, "{0}", 1); "1" – Caudex