@Html.DisplayFor - DateFormat ("mm/dd/yyyy")

Question

I have the following razor code that I want to have mm/dd/yyyy date format:

Audit Date: @Html.DisplayFor(Model => Model.AuditDate) 

I have tried number of different approaches but none of that approaches works in my situation

my AuditDate is a DateTime? type

I have tried something like this and got this error:

@Html.DisplayFor(Model => Model.AuditDate.Value.ToShortDateString()) 

Additional information: Templates can be used only with field access, property access, single-dimension array index, or single-parameter custom indexer expressions.

Tried this:

@Html.DisplayFor(Model => Model.AuditDate.ToString("mm/dd/yyyy")) 

No overload for method 'ToString' takes 1 arguments

Answer 1

If you use DisplayFor, then you have to either define the format via the DisplayFormat attribute or use a custom display template. (A full list of preset DisplayFormatString's can be found here.)

[DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:d}")] public DateTime? AuditDate { get; set; } 

Or create the view Views\Shared\DisplayTemplates\DateTime.cshtml:

@model DateTime? @if (Model.HasValue) {     @Model.Value.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy") } 

That will apply to all DateTimes, though, even ones where you're encoding the time as well. If you want it to apply only to date-only properties, then use Views\Shared\DisplayTemplates\Date.cshtml and the DataType attribute on your property:

[DataType(DataType.Date)] public DateTime? AuditDate { get; set; } 

The final option is to not use DisplayFor and instead render the property directly:

@if (Model.AuditDate.HasValue) {     @Model.AuditDate.Value.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy") }