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

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.

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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();
}

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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;
 }

Answer 6

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

Answer 7

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

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

Answer 8

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

Answer 9

Old post, but I'm using this:

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

Answer 10

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);

Answer 11

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()); 
}

Answer 12

Try:

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

Answer 13

What wrong with:

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

Answer 14

Just specify the format:

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