How to find the 3rd Friday in a month with C#?

Question

Given a date (of type DateTime), how do I find the 3rd Friday in the month of that date?

Answer 1

Here is my two cents... An optimized solution without unnecessary loops or tests :

public static DateTime ThirdFridayOfMonth(DateTime dateTime)
{
    int day = dateTime.Day;
    return dateTime.AddDays(21 - day - ((int)dateTime.DayOfWeek + 37 - day) % 7);
}

Answer 2

Old post, but I found remarkably few decent answers online for this surely quite common problem! Mark Ransom's answer should be the last word on this algorithm-wise, but here is a C# helper class (in this case I think clearer than extensions) for anyone who wants a quick answer to the common problems of "first day of week in month", "xth day of week in month" and "last day of week in month".

I modified it to return DateTime.MinValue if the Xth day of the week falls outside the provided month rather than wrapping to the next month, because that to me seems more useful.

I've thrown in a LINQPad-runnable example program too.

void Main()
{
    DayOfWeek dow = DayOfWeek.Friday;
    int y = 2014;
    int m = 2;

    String.Format("First {0}: {1}", new object[] { dow, DateHelper.FirstDayOfWeekInMonth(y, m, dow) }).Dump();

    "".Dump();

    String.Format("Last {0}: {1}", new object[] { dow, DateHelper.LastDayOfWeekInMonth(y, m, dow) }).Dump();

    "".Dump();

    for(int i = 1; i <= 6; i++)
        String.Format("{0} #{1}: {2}", new object[] { dow, i, DateHelper.XthDayOfWeekInMonth(y, m, dow, i) }).Dump();
}


public class DateHelper
{
    public static DateTime FirstDayOfWeekInMonth(int year, int month, DayOfWeek day)
    {
        DateTime res = new DateTime(year, month, 1);
        int offset = -(res.DayOfWeek - day);

        if (offset < 0)
            offset += 7;

        res = res.AddDays(offset);

        return res;
    }

    public static DateTime LastDayOfWeekInMonth(int year, int month, DayOfWeek day)
    {
        DateTime dt = new DateTime(year, month, 1).AddMonths(1);        
        DateTime res = FirstDayOfWeekInMonth(dt.Year, dt.Month, day);

        res = res.AddDays(-7);

        return res;
    }


    public static DateTime XthDayOfWeekInMonth(int year, int month, DayOfWeek day, int x)
    {
        DateTime res = DateTime.MinValue;

        if (x > 0)
        {
            res = FirstDayOfWeekInMonth(year, month, day);

            if (x > 1)
                res = res.AddDays((x - 1) * 7);

            res = res.Year == year && res.Month == month ? res : DateTime.MinValue;
        }

        return res;
    }
}

Prints:

First Friday: 07/02/2014 00:00:00

Last Friday: 28/02/2014 00:00:00

Friday #1: 07/02/2014 00:00:00
Friday #2: 14/02/2014 00:00:00
Friday #3: 21/02/2014 00:00:00
Friday #4: 28/02/2014 00:00:00
Friday #5: 01/01/0001 00:00:00
Friday #6: 01/01/0001 00:00:00

Answer 3

Slightly more optimized version:

    DateTime Now = DateTime.Now;

    DateTime TempDate = new DateTime(Now.Year, Now.Month, 1);

    // find first friday
    while (TempDate.DayOfWeek != DayOfWeek.Friday)
        TempDate = TempDate.AddDays(1);

    // add two weeks
    TempDate = TempDate.AddDays(14);

Answer 4

Probably best to abstract this to a method to do any date/day combination:

(Extension Method)

public static bool TryGetDayOfMonth(this DateTime instance, 
                                 DayOfWeek dayOfWeek, 
                                 int occurance, 
                                 out DateTime dateOfMonth)
{
    if (instance == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("instance");
    }

    if (occurance <= 0 || occurance > 5)
    {
        throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("occurance", "Occurance must be greater than zero and less than 6.");
    }

    bool result;
    dateOfMonth = new DateTime();

    // Change to first day of the month
    DateTime dayOfMonth = instance.AddDays(1 - instance.Day);

    // Find first dayOfWeek of this month;
    if (dayOfMonth.DayOfWeek > dayOfWeek)
    {
        dayOfMonth = dayOfMonth.AddDays(7 - (int)dayOfMonth.DayOfWeek + (int)dayOfWeek);
    }
    else
    {
        dayOfMonth = dayOfMonth.AddDays((int)dayOfWeek - (int)dayOfMonth.DayOfWeek);
    }

    // add 7 days per occurance
    dayOfMonth = dayOfMonth.AddDays(7 * (occurance - 1));

    // make sure this occurance is within the original month
    result = dayOfMonth.Month == instance.Month;


    if (result)
    {
        dateOfMonth = dayOfMonth;
    }

    return result;
}

Results:

DateTime myDate = new DateTime(2013, 1, 1)
DateTime dateOfMonth;

myDate.TryGetDayOfMonth(DayOfWeek.Sunday, 1, out dateOfMonth) 
// returns: true; dateOfMonth = Sunday, 1/6/2013

myDate.TryGetDayOfMonth(DayOfWeek.Sunday, 4, out dateOfMonth) 
// returns: true; dateOfMonth = Sunday, 1/27/2013

myDate.TryGetDayOfMonth(DayOfWeek.Sunday, 5, out dateOfMonth) 
// returns: false; 

myDate.TryGetDayOfMonth(DayOfWeek.Wednesday, 1, out dateOfMonth) 
// returns: true; dateOfMonth = Wednesday, 1/2/2013

myDate.TryGetDayOfMonth(DayOfWeek.Wednesday, 4, out dateOfMonth) 
// returns: true; dateOfMonth = Wednesday, 1/23/2013

myDate.TryGetDayOfMonth(DayOfWeek.Wednesday, 5, out dateOfMonth) 
// returns: true; dateOfMonth = Wednesday, 1/30/2013 

// etc

Answer 5

I know this post is old. I have this solution, trying to find a more clean code. #unclebob

    public static DateTime FindTheNthDay(
        int year, int month, DayOfWeek day, int occurrence)
    {
        var startDate = new DateTime(year, month, 1);

        while(startDate.DayOfWeek != day)
        {
            startDate = startDate.AddDays(1);
        }

        var nDays = 7 * (occurrence - 1);
        var result = startDate.AddDays(nDays);

        return result;
    }

> FindTheNthDay(2006, 11, DayOfWeek.Friday, 4)
[11/24/2006 12:00:00 AM]
> FindTheNthDay(2005, 11, DayOfWeek.Friday, 4)
[11/25/2005 12:00:00 AM]
> FindTheNthDay(2004, 11, DayOfWeek.Friday, 4)
[11/26/2004 12:00:00 AM]
> FindTheNthDay(2003, 11, DayOfWeek.Friday, 4)
[11/28/2003 12:00:00 AM]
> FindTheNthDay(1983, 11, DayOfWeek.Friday, 4)
[11/25/1983 12:00:00 AM]
> FindTheNthDay(1978, 11, DayOfWeek.Friday, 4)
[11/24/1978 12:00:00 AM]
> FindTheNthDay(1972, 11, DayOfWeek.Friday, 4)
[11/24/1972 12:00:00 AM]

Answer 6

Sorry to jump in late on this... Might help someone else tho.

Begin rant: Loops, yuck. Too much code, yuck. Not Generic Enough, yuck.

Here's a simple function with a free overload.

public DateTime DateOfWeekOfMonth(int year, int month, DayOfWeek dayOfWeek, byte weekNumber)
{
    DateTime tempDate = new DateTime(year, month, 1);
    tempDate = tempDate.AddDays(-(tempDate.DayOfWeek - dayOfWeek));

    return
        tempDate.Day > (byte)DayOfWeek.Saturday
            ? tempDate.AddDays(7 * weekNumber)
            : tempDate.AddDays(7 * (weekNumber - 1));
}

public DateTime DateOfWeekOfMonth(DateTime sender, DayOfWeek dayOfWeek, byte weekNumber)
{
    return DateOfWeekOfMonth(sender.Year, sender.Month, dayOfWeek, weekNumber);
}

Your usage:

DateTime thirdFridayOfMonth = DateOfWeekOfMonth(DateTime.Now, DayOfWeek.Friday, 3);