Formatting nullable DateTime fields in strong typed View

Question

I have a Person class with a BornDate property in my model defined as

[DisplayName("Born Date")]
public DateTime? BornDate { get; set; }

I use this field in my view as

<td style="white-space:nowrap">
    <%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.BornDate)%>
    <br />
    <%= Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.BornDate, new { id = "bornDate" })%>
    <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.BornDate, "*")%>
</td>

The problem is that when I am editing a Person instance with the BornDate text box is formatted as

dd/MM/yyyy hh.mm.ss

while I would like to format it without the time part ("dd/MM/yyyy"). I am not able to use the toString method with the format string because it is a nullable field.

what can I do?

Cephalalgia

Good example also here stackoverflow.com/questions/12633471 – Entophyte

Good example about same problem can be found here stackoverflow.com/questions/12633471 – Entophyte

Answer 1

You should be able to use Value. Just check it isn't null first.

var displayDate = model.BornDate.HasValue ? model.BornDate.Value.ToString("yyyy") : "NoDate";

Leet

First of all thanks for your response. Where do I have to put this code? If I put it inside the TextBoxFor function, within the lambda expression, I get an InvalidOperationException "Templates can be used only with field access, property access, single-dimension array index, or single-parameter custom indexer expressions." – Cephalalgia

Hrm... yeah I forgot the fact you are using strongly typed helpers. I think the only way round this is to use the TextBox helper: <%= Html.TextBox("date", Model.BornDate.Value.ToString("yyyy"), new { id = "bornDate" }) %> – Leet

if anyone has issue to display date in View check this instead of DisplayFor – Annorah

Answer 2

I know this is very late but I was researching another problem and came across this issue. There is a way to only show the date part which does not require presentation layer formatting.

[DisplayName("Born Date")]
[DataType(DataType.Date)]
public DateTime? BornDate { get; set; }

Using this will ensure that everywhere you bind to this property on your View, only the date will show

Hope this helps somebody

Phoebe

Doesn't work in current versions of Razor (4+); can't speak to older ones. – Bynum

this doesn't work on all Html helpers, specifically TextBoxFor – Cementite

Answer 3

To do this in your VIEW, you can use Razor syntax, as well:

 @Html.TextBox("BornDate", item.BornDate.HasValue ? item.BornDate.Value.ToShortDateString():"") 

Symbolics

How should I use for DisplayFor? – Boy

Answer 4

You can do this, it will work with Nullable model types:

@model DateTime?
@{
    object txtVal = "";
    if (Model.HasValue) 
    {
        txtVal = Model.Value;
    };
}
@Html.TextBoxFor(x => Model, new {Value = string.Format(ViewData.ModelMetadata.EditFormatString, txtVal))

Tupler

Answer 5

Another way I've tackled this issue is by adding format to the TextBoxFor

@Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.BornDate, "{0:MM/dd/yyyy}", new { id = "bornDate" })

Errant