Current Date in Silverlight XAML TextBlock

Question

I am coming from Flex where you can do just about anything inside of curly braces. I am trying to get a TextBlock to display today\'s Date and Time without just cod

Answer 1

Even if you could declare DateTime.Now in Silverlight's XAML (since you can in WPF - http://soumya.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/wpf-simplified-part-11-xaml-tricks/), you have the issue that your time won't update. If you use a local timer that updates on the second you can ensure that your time will update as well.

public class LocalTimer : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
    private DispatcherTimer timer;

    public LocalTimer()
    {
        timer = new DispatcherTimer();
        timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1.0);
        timer.Tick += new EventHandler(TimerCallback);
        this.TimeFormat = "hh:mm:ss";
        this.DateFormat = "ffffdd, MMMM dd";
    }

    private void TimerCallback(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("FormattedDate"));
        PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("FormattedTime"));
    }

    public bool Enabled
    {
        get { return this.timer.IsEnabled; }
        set { if (value) this.timer.Start(); else this.timer.Stop(); }
    }

    public string FormattedDate { get { return DateTime.Now.ToString(this.DateFormat); } set {} }
    public string FormattedTime { get { return DateTime.Now.ToString(this.TimeFormat); } set{} }

    public string TimeFormat { get; set; }
    public string DateFormat { get; set; }

    #region INotifyPropertyChanged Members

    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

    #endregion
}

Declare an instance of this in xaml ala:

and use the binding to ensure that your time is always reflected.