don't display datetime min value in gridview

Question

given:

public class Customer
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public DateTime Birthdate { get; set; }
}


        

Answer 1

You can add an additional property to the Customer called BirthDateStr.

public class Customer
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public DateTime Birthdate { get; set; }
    public string BirthDateStr
    {
        get
        {
            if (Birthdate != DateTime.MinValue)
                return Birthdate.ToString();
            else
                return "";
        }
}

Obviously, you could do whatever formatting you'd like to do on the BirthDateStr in the getter to make it match your format.

Answer 2

Alternatively, you can update your front-end GridView display to hide out the DateTime.MinValue as follow:

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Last Request Date">
<ItemTemplate><%# (DateTime)Eval("LastRequestDate").Equals(DateTime.MinValue) ? "" : string.Format("{0:dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt}", (DateTime)Eval("LastRequestDate")) %></ItemTemplate>

Answer 3

Unless that's mapped to a Database, I'd make it nullable:

public class Customer
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public DateTime? Birthdate { get; set; }
}

EDIT:

If it IS mapped, then I'd just make a readonly nullable value for it:

public DateTime? BirthdateDisplay
{
   get
   {
      if (this.Birthdate == default(DateTime))
         return null;
      else
         return this.Birthdate;
   }   
}