current date format in report rdlc c#

Question

I am using this expression to display the current date in textbox using rdlc report.

What is the expression for getting this output '22nd day of August 2018'?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I don't believe there's a build-in method for getting a day's ordinal string ("st", "nd", "rd", and "th"), but you could easily write a method to do this, based on some well-known rules.

Here's one example which takes in an integer and returns the string value of that integer with the ordinal (like "1st", "2nd", "3rd", "4th"):

private static string GetNumberWithOrdinalIndicator(int number)
{
    switch (number)
    {
        // Special cases for 11, 12, and 13
        case 11: case 12: case 13:
            return number + "th";
        default:
            switch (number % 10) // Last digit of number
            {
                case 1:
                    return number + "st";
                case 2:
                    return number + "nd";
                case 3:
                    return number + "rd";
                default:
                    return number + "th";
            }
    }
}

Now with that method complete, we can create another method that constructs your custom date string using the parts of the date:

/// <summary>
/// Returns a custom date string, like "22nd day of August 2018"
/// </summary>
/// <param name="date">The date to use</param>
/// <returns>The custom formatted date string</returns>
private static string GetCustomDateString(DateTime date)
{
    return $"{GetNumberWithOrdinalIndicator(date.Day)} day of {date.ToString("MMMM yyyy")}";
}

So finally, in use this might look like:

private static void Main()
{
    var todaysCustomDateString = GetCustomDateString(DateTime.Today);

    Console.WriteLine($"Today is the {todaysCustomDateString}");

    GetKeyFromUser("\nDone! Press any key to exit...");
}

Which will output: