How to get a Long Date format from DateTime without a weekday

Question

I'm looking for a locale-aware way of acquiring a long date time without the weekday. Just such a beast exist?

Below is the code I use to get the long date format including the weekday:

DateTime time = ...
String formattedDate = time.ToLongDateString();

Edit

Examples of what I would like to see:

• en-us: December 5, 2009
• fr-fr: 5 décembre 2009
• es-es: 05 de diciembre de 2009

ToLongDateString() returns the following:

• en-us: Saturday, December 5, 2009
• fr-fr: samedi 5 décembre 2009
• es-es: sábado, 05 de diciembre de 2009

Caddaric

Answer 1

This seemed to do the trick.

1. Enumerate all valid datetime patterns: CultureInfo.DateTimeFormat.GetAllDateTimePatterns
2. Select longest pattern (presumably this is the best match) that:
   • Is a substring of the CultureInfo.DateTimeFormat.LongDatePattern
   • Does not contain "ddd" (short day name)
   • Does not contain "dddd" (long day name)

This appears to come up with the strings I was looking for.

See code below:

class DateTest
{
    static private string GetDatePatternWithoutWeekday(CultureInfo cultureInfo)
    {
        string[] patterns = cultureInfo e.DateTimeFormat.GetAllDateTimePatterns();

        string longPattern = cultureInfo.DateTimeFormat.LongDatePattern;

        string acceptablePattern = String.Empty;

        foreach (string pattern in patterns)
        {
            if (longPattern.Contains(pattern) && !pattern.Contains("ddd") && !pattern.Contains("dddd"))
            {
                if (pattern.Length > acceptablePattern.Length)
                {
                    acceptablePattern = pattern;
                }
            }
        }

        if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(acceptablePattern))
        {
            return longPattern;
        }
        return acceptablePattern;
    }

    static private void Test(string locale)
    {
        DateTime dateTime = new DateTime(2009, 12, 5);

        Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture  = new CultureInfo(locale);

        string format = GetDatePatternWithoutWeekday(Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture);

        string result = dateTime.ToString(format);

        MessageBox.Show(result);            
    }
}

Technically, it probably wouldn't work if a long format had the name of the day sandwiched in the middle. For that, I should choose the pattern with longest common substring instead of longest exact match.

Caddaric

Answer 2

String formattedDate = DateTime.Now.Date.ToLongDateString().Replace(DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek.ToString()+ ", ", "")

Fingerboard

This did not work for Spanish but VDWWD's answer did – Frostbitten

Answer 3

Improving on the accepted answer, GetAllDateTimePatterns can take a parameter to restrict the result to patterns relating to a standard format string, such as 'D' for the long date pattern.

For example, GetAllDateTimePatterns('D') is currently returning this for en-US:

"dddd, MMMM d, yyyy", "MMMM d, yyyy", "dddd, d MMMM, yyyy", "d MMMM, yyyy" 

and this for zh-HK:

"yyyy'年'M'月'd'日'", "yyyy'年'MM'月'dd'日'", "yyyy年MMMd日", "yyyy年MMMd日, dddd"

Assuming they're listed in some order of preference or prevalence, we can select the first option that does not contain the day of the week.

Here are extension methods so you can simply use myDateTime.ToLongDateStringWithoutDayOfWeek() and myDateTime.ToLongDateTimeStringWithoutDayOfWeek().

public static string ToLongDateStringWithoutDayOfWeek(this DateTime d)
{
    return d.ToString(
               CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.GetAllDateTimePatterns('D')
                   .FirstOrDefault(a => !a.Contains("ddd") && !a.Contains("dddd")) 
               ?? "D");
}

public static string ToLongDateTimeStringWithoutDayOfWeek(this DateTime d, bool includeSeconds = false)
{
    char format = includeSeconds ? 'F' : 'f';
    return d.ToString(
               CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.GetAllDateTimePatterns(format)
                   .FirstOrDefault(a => !a.Contains("ddd") && !a.Contains("dddd")) 
               ?? format.ToString()); 
}

Acetal

Answer 4

This is an improved answer from Reza, which does not work correctly with some localizations.

string formattedDate = DateTime.Now.ToLongDateString()
   .Replace(DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.GetDayName(DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek), "")
   .TrimStart(", ".ToCharArray());

Leiva

TrimStart is not OK, since for example in hungarian the long date is: "2020. december 21., hétfő" So the day name is at the end of the string. (hétfő = monday) – Waxy

Answer 5

A very awful, horrible way to accomplish this is to remove the format specifiers you don't want from the existing LongDatePattern:

public static string CorrectedLongDatePattern(CultureInfo cultureInfo)
{
    var info = cultureInfo.DateTimeFormat;

    // This is bad, mmmkay?
    return Regex.Replace(info.LongDatePattern, "dddd,?",String.Empty).Trim();
}

Distinguish

This is nice and simple, but doesn't handle all cases. For instance ka-GE is "yyyy 'წლის' dd MM, dddd". This answer would leave the trailing comma – Caddaric

Agreed, it is a "very awful, horrible" solution :D You could add that to the regex: /,?\s*dddd,?/ – Distinguish

I think adding that to the regex would help, yes. – Caddaric

Why is it awful and horrible? Seems perfectly sensible. – Archil

Answer 6

This is an old, old thead, but I came across it because it perfectly matched the use case I needed to solve. I ended up writing a piece of code that works, so I thought I'd include it for those that need it. (It has a few extra tricks, like defaulting to the current date, and allowing either the full date string for a culture, or one with the day-of-the-week removed):

 public string DateString(DateTime? pDt = null, string lang, bool includeDayOfWeek = true)
 {
    if (pDt == null) pDt = DateTime.Now;
    DateTime dt = (DateTime)pDt;

    System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture = null; 
    try {   culture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo(lang); } 
       catch{ culture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture; }

    string ss = dt.ToString("D", culture);
    if (!includeDayOfWeek)
    {
       //  Find day-of-week string, and remove it from the date string
       //  (including any trailing spaces or punctuation)
       string dow = dt.ToString("dddd", culture);
       int len = dow.Length;
       int pos = ss.IndexOf(dow);
       if (pos >= 0)
       {
          while ( ((len + pos) < ss.Length)  &&  ( !Char.IsLetterOrDigit(ss[len+pos])))
             len++;
          ss = ss.Substring(0, pos) + ss.Substring(len+pos, ss.Length - (len+pos));
       }
    }
   return ss;
 }

Earl

This does the same thing as stackoverflow.com/a/52736404 and has the same problem with hu-HU – Etui

Answer 7

If the LongDate sequence is also culture specific, then I'm afraid you're out of luck and you'll have to write actual code for this. Otherwise, a collection of formatting tags will do the trick.

I'm afraid what you'll have to do is create an array of 7 strings (one for each day) in the local culture, and remove those strings from your LongDate format output. Then make sure you remove all duplicated /'s -'s and spaces.

Hope there's a better way but I don't see it.

Guilder

Asking for the wrong result (a string with the day of the week) and trying to munge it to an acceptable form (by deleting the day of the week) is a very poor substitute for simply asking for a date string formatted appropriately in the first place. – Quinidine

@ Stephen: I agree. But how do you know the proper formatting for the current culture? The order of Year, month and day, the separator chars etc. etc. – Guilder

@David - exactly right, you can't. If it matters, you'd have to go research the appropriate formatting for each culture, as Microsoft has done with cultureInfo.DateTimeFormat.LongDatePattern. – Congeal

Answer 8

Kinda hilarious how many answers this question has (and that it's still an issue). Might as well join the party with my solution:

    CultureInfo culture = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture; // or replace with the culture of your choosing

    string pattern = culture.DateTimeFormat.LongDatePattern
        .Replace("dddd, ", "")
        .Replace(",dddd", "");

    return dt.ToString(pattern, culture);

Then you've got both cases covered whether the day of the week precedes or follows the rest.

Archil

and .Replace("dddd ", "") ;-), i.e. for the cs culture – Marmalade

Answer 9

I have expanded on the suggestion by Bart Calixto to fix the dd MMM yyyy format issue (here in Australia we also use UK date format dd/mm/yy)

I also frequently need to convert between Aust and US date formats.

This code fixes the problem (my version is in VB)

Public Shared Function ToLongDateWithoutWeekDayString(source As DateTime, cult As System.Globalization.CultureInfo) As String

Return source.ToString("D", cult).Replace(source.DayOfWeek.ToString(), "").Trim(","c, " "c)

End Function

Before calling the function you need to set culture, I do it this way after getting the visitor's country from http://ipinfo.io

Select Case Country.country
            Case "AU"
                cult = New CultureInfo("en-AU")
            Case "US"
                cult = New CultureInfo("en-US")
            Case "GB"
                cult = New CultureInfo("en-GB")
        End Select

Dim date1 As New Date(2010, 8, 18)
lblDate.Text = ToLongDateWithoutWeekDayString(date1, cult)

After setting AU or GB culture result is 18 August 2010

After setting US culture result is August 18, 2010

Adam do you agree this solves the formatting issue you refer to?

Thanks Bart that was very nice code.

Dont forget to add Dim cult As System.Globalization.CultureInfo after Inherits System.Web.UI.Page

Benzoin

I suggest replacing source.DayOfWeek.ToString() with source.ToString("dddd", cult) so that it works with other languages, not just English. – Agonize

Answer 10

Try:

DateTime time = ....
string formmattedDate = time.Day.ToString() + " " + time.ToString("MMMM");

Representational

Answer 11

Why not get the LongDate and trim off the first portion where the weekday appears?

DateTime date = Convert.ToDateTime(content["DisplayDate"]); 
  //-->3/15/2016 2:09:13 PM

string newDate = date.ToString("D", new CultureInfo("es-ES")); 
  //--> martes, 15 de marzo de 2016

var index = newDate.IndexOf(",") + 1;
  //--> 7

string finalDate = newDate.Substring(index);
  //--> 15 de marzo de 2016

Hardej

Because in some cultures, the weekday might not appear at the front. – Fadeless

Answer 12

Old post, but I'm using this:

public static string ToLongDateWithoutWeekDayString(this DateTime source)
{
    return source.ToLongDateString()
                 .Replace(source.DayOfWeek.ToString(), "")
                 .Trim(',', ' ');
}

Cribbs

Answer 13

My solution:

DateTime date = DateTime.Now;
CultureInfo culture = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture;
string dayName = date.ToString("dddd", culture);
string fullDate = date.ToString("f", culture);
string trim = string.Join(" ", fullDate.Replace(dayName, "").TrimStart(',').TrimStart(' ').Split(new[] { ' ' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)); 

The last line:

1. Removes leftover comma at start
2. Removes leftover space at start
3. Removes leftover double-space from anywhere in the string

Tested for each culture from

CultureInfo[] cultures = CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.AllCultures);

Obaza

Answer 14

This is an improved answer from @VDWWD, which does not work correctly with some locales;

• Hungarian hu-HU has a trailing comma instead of starting.

• Arabic langauges ar-* use a different character for commas ،

• Danish da-DK uses the 'den' suffix when including a named weekday (eg Tirsdag den for Tuesday), which isn't included in the day name.

• Mongolian mn-MN similarily uses 'гараг' (eg Мягмар гараг for Tuesday) which from what I read isnt actually a suffix, it's more like day in Tuesday, but c# dates dont add it as part of the day name anyway.

    var date = DateTime.Now;
    string formattedDate = date.ToLongDateString()
        .Replace(DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.GetDayName(date.DayOfWeek) + " den", "")
        .Replace(DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.GetDayName(date.DayOfWeek) + " гараг", "")
        .Replace(DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.GetDayName(date.DayOfWeek), "")
        .TrimStart('،', ',', ' ')
        .TrimEnd('،', ',', ' ');
  

Here's a c# fiddle that shows it working on a full list of culture codes

Etui

Answer 15

What wrong with:

var ci = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("nl-NL");
var date1 = DateTime.ParseExact(date, "dd MMM yyyy", ci);

Toms

That assumes you want dd MMM yyyy, which would use the locale-specific month name, but not the format. See the examples in the question. – Caddaric

Answer 16

Just specify the format:

DateTime.ToString("MMMM dd, yyyy");

Delgadillo

That assumes you want MMMM dd, yyyy, which would use the locale-specific month name, but not the format. See the examples in the question. – Caddaric

Answer 17

You can concatenate the standard month/day pattern (m) with custom year (yyyy):

string formattedDate = date.ToString("M") + ", " + date.ToString("yyyy");

Examples:

June 15, 2020 (en-US)
15. juni, 2020 (da-DK)
15 Juni, 2020 (id-ID)

Viviyan