Difference in months between two dates

Question

How to calculate the difference in months between two dates in C#?

Is there is equivalent of VB\'s DateDiff() method in C#. I need to find difference in

Answer 1

My understanding of the total months difference between 2 dates has an integral and a fractional part (the date matters).

The integral part is the full months difference.

The fractional part, for me, is the difference of the % of the day (to the full days of month) between the starting and ending months.

public static class DateTimeExtensions
{
    public static double TotalMonthsDifference(this DateTime from, DateTime to)
    {
        //Compute full months difference between dates
        var fullMonthsDiff = (to.Year - from.Year)*12 + to.Month - from.Month;

        //Compute difference between the % of day to full days of each month
        var fractionMonthsDiff = ((double)(to.Day-1) / (DateTime.DaysInMonth(to.Year, to.Month)-1)) -
            ((double)(from.Day-1)/ (DateTime.DaysInMonth(from.Year, from.Month)-1));

        return fullMonthsDiff + fractionMonthsDiff;
    }
}

With this extension, those are the results:

2/29/2000 TotalMonthsDifference 2/28/2001 => 12
2/28/2000 TotalMonthsDifference 2/28/2001 => 12.035714285714286
01/01/2000 TotalMonthsDifference 01/16/2000 => 0.5
01/31/2000 TotalMonthsDifference 01/01/2000 => -1.0
01/31/2000 TotalMonthsDifference 02/29/2000 => 1.0
01/31/2000 TotalMonthsDifference 02/28/2000 => 0.9642857142857143
01/31/2001 TotalMonthsDifference 02/28/2001 => 1.0