DateTime将日期显示为01/01/0001

Question

Sorry if this seems as a stupid question, but I cannot find an answer anywhere and I am a bit of a newbie. DateTime shows to be what I surmised as the Min Date. For instance:

DateTime updatedDate = new DateTime();
outItem.AddDate = updatedDate.ToLongDateString();

The output comes out to January 01, 0001. I've tried many variations of this with similar results. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

It depends on what you mean by "wrong". new DateTime() does indeed have the same value as DateTime.MinValue . If you want the current time, you should use:

DateTime updatedDate = DateTime.Now;

or

DateTime updatedDate = DateTime.UtcNow;

(The first gives you the local time, the second gives you the universal time. DateTime is somewhat messed up when it comes to the local/universal divide.)

Answer 2

If you're looking to get the current date, use DateTime.Now . You're creating a new instance of the date class, and the min value is its default value.

DateTime updatedDate = DateTime.Now;
outItem.AddDate = updatedDate.ToLongDateString();

EDIT: Actually, you can shorten your code by just doing this:

outItem.AddDate = DateTime.Now.ToLongDateString();

Answer 3

Jon Skeet says correct, and I have some to add.

The "wrong" depends on what time you want to get.

The DateTime is a struct , and the the default contructor of a struct

always initializes all fields to their zero for numeric type and null

for reference type.

so if you want to get the current local date and time, you can call static property DateTime.Now.

   var curDateTime = DateTime.Now;

if you want to get UTC time.

   var utcDateTime = DateTime.UtcNow;

Note: the DateTime.UtcNow get the current date and time, but instead of using local time zone, it uses UTC time instead.

You can reference the link as below.

http://blackrabbitcoder.net/archive/2010/11/18/c.net-little-wonders-datetime-is-packed-with-goodies.aspx