Changing the string format of the WPF DatePicker

Question

I need to change the string format of the DatePickerTextBox in the WPF Toolkit DatePicker, to use hyphens instead of slashes for the seperators.

Is there a way to ov

Answer 1

As Ben Pearce answered we can use the CultureInfo Class to take care of the Custom Format, I really think is the only logical way. And if you have different dateTimePickers which have different Format, you can use:

CultureInfo ci = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name);
ci.DateTimeFormat.LongDatePattern = "MMM.yyyy"; //This can be used for one type of DatePicker
ci.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern = "dd.MMM.yyyy"; //for the second type
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ci;

And then you can just change the DateFormat in the .xaml document.

  <DatePicker Name="dateTimePicker1" SelectedDateFormat="Long"  />

Answer 2

I have solved this problem with a help of this code. Hope it will help you all as well.

<Style TargetType="{x:Type DatePickerTextBox}">
 <Setter Property="Control.Template">
  <Setter.Value>
   <ControlTemplate>
    <TextBox x:Name="PART_TextBox"
     Text="{Binding Path=SelectedDate, StringFormat='dd MMM yyyy', 
     RelativeSource={RelativeSource AncestorType={x:Type DatePicker}}}" />
   </ControlTemplate>
  </Setter.Value>
 </Setter>
</Style>

Answer 3

It appears, as per Wonko's answer, that you cannot specify the Date format in Xaml format or by inheriting from the DatePicker.

I have put the following code into my View's constructor which overrides the ShortDateFormat for the current thread:

CultureInfo ci = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name);
ci.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern = "dd-MM-yyyy";
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ci;