A type for Date only in C# - why is there no Date type?

Question

In our C# project we have the need for representing a date without a time. I know of the existence of the DateTime, however, it incorporates a time of day as well. I

Answer 1

In addition to Robert's answer you also have the DateTime.ToShortDateString method. Also, if you really wanted a Date object you could always use the Adapter pattern and wrap the DateTime object exposing only what you want (i.e. month, day, year).

Answer 2

There is always the DateTime.Date property which cuts off the time part of the DateTime. Maybe you can encapsulate or wrap DateTime in your own Date type.

And for the question why, well, I guess you'll have to ask Anders Heljsberg.

Answer 3

If you use the Date or Today properties to get only the date portion from the DateTime object.

DateTime today = DateTime.Today;
DateTime yesterday = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1).Date;

Then you will get the date component only with the time component set to midnight.

Answer 4

I created a simple Date struct for times when you need a simple date without worrying about time portion, timezones, local vs. utc, etc.

https://github.com/claycephus/csharp-date

Answer 5

Yeah, also System.DateTime is sealed. I've seen some folks play games with this by creating a custom class just to get the string value of the time as mentioned by earlier posts, stuff like:

class CustomDate
{
    public DateTime Date { get; set; }
    public bool IsTimeOnly { get; private set; }

    public CustomDate(bool isTimeOnly)
    {
        this.IsTimeOnly = isTimeOnly;
    }

    public string GetValue()
    {
        if (IsTimeOnly)
        {
            return Date.ToShortTimeString();
        }

        else
        {
            return Date.ToString();
        }
    }
}

This is maybe unnecessary, since you could easily just extract GetShortTimeString from a plain old DateTime type without a new class

Answer 6

I suspect there is no dedicate pure Date class because you already have DateTime which can handle it. Having Date would lead to duplication and confusion.

If you want the standard approach look at the DateTime.Date property which gives just the date portion of a DateTime with the time value set to 12:00:00 midnight (00:00:00).