In C#, how do I calculate someone's age based on a DateTime type birthday?

Question

Given a DateTime representing a person\'s birthday, how do I calculate their age in years?

Answer 1

Do we need to consider people who is smaller than 1 year? as Chinese culture, we describe small babies' age as 2 months or 4 weeks.

Below is my implementation, it is not as simple as what I imagined, especially to deal with date like 2/28.

public static string HowOld(DateTime birthday, DateTime now)
{
    if (now < birthday)
        throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("birthday must be less than now.");

    TimeSpan diff = now - birthday;
    int diffDays = (int)diff.TotalDays;

    if (diffDays > 7)//year, month and week
    {
        int age = now.Year - birthday.Year;

        if (birthday > now.AddYears(-age))
            age--;

        if (age > 0)
        {
            return age + (age > 1 ? " years" : " year");
        }
        else
        {// month and week
            DateTime d = birthday;
            int diffMonth = 1;

            while (d.AddMonths(diffMonth) <= now)
            {
                diffMonth++;
            }

            age = diffMonth-1;

            if (age == 1 && d.Day > now.Day)
                age--;

            if (age > 0)
            {
                return age + (age > 1 ? " months" : " month");
            }
            else
            {
                age = diffDays / 7;
                return age + (age > 1 ? " weeks" : " week");
            }
        }
    }
    else if (diffDays > 0)
    {
        int age = diffDays;
        return age + (age > 1 ? " days" : " day");
    }
    else
    {
        int age = diffDays;
        return "just born";
    }
}

This implementation has passed below test cases.

[TestMethod]
public void TestAge()
{
    string age = HowOld(new DateTime(2011, 1, 1), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 year", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2011, 11, 30), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 year", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2001, 1, 1), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("11 years", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2012, 1, 1), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("10 months", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2011, 12, 1), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("11 months", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2012, 10, 1), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 month", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2008, 2, 28), new DateTime(2009, 2, 28));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 year", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2008, 3, 28), new DateTime(2009, 2, 28));
    Assert.AreEqual("11 months", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2008, 3, 28), new DateTime(2009, 3, 28));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 year", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2009, 1, 28), new DateTime(2009, 2, 28));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 month", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2009, 2, 1), new DateTime(2009, 3, 1));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 month", age);

    // NOTE.
    // new DateTime(2008, 1, 31).AddMonths(1) == new DateTime(2009, 2, 28);
    // new DateTime(2008, 1, 28).AddMonths(1) == new DateTime(2009, 2, 28);
    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2009, 1, 31), new DateTime(2009, 2, 28));
    Assert.AreEqual("4 weeks", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2009, 2, 1), new DateTime(2009, 2, 28));
    Assert.AreEqual("3 weeks", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2009, 2, 1), new DateTime(2009, 3, 1));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 month", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2012, 11, 5), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("3 weeks", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2012, 11, 1), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("4 weeks", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2012, 11, 20), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 week", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2012, 11, 25), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("5 days", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2012, 11, 29), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("1 day", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2012, 11, 30), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    Assert.AreEqual("just born", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2000, 2, 29), new DateTime(2009, 2, 28));
    Assert.AreEqual("8 years", age);

    age = HowOld(new DateTime(2000, 2, 29), new DateTime(2009, 3, 1));
    Assert.AreEqual("9 years", age);

    Exception e = null;

    try
    {
        age = HowOld(new DateTime(2012, 12, 1), new DateTime(2012, 11, 30));
    }
    catch (ArgumentOutOfRangeException ex)
    {
        e = ex;
    }

    Assert.IsTrue(e != null);
}

Hope it's helpful.