Have datetime.now return to the nearest second

Question

I have a "requirement" to give a timestamp to the nearest second... but NOT more accurate than that. Rounding or truncating the time is fine.

I have come up with this abomination

 dateTime = DateTime.Parse(DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("U"));

(U is the Long format date and time. "03 January 2007 17:25:30")

Is there some less horrific way of achieving this?

Edit: So from the linked truncate milliseconds answer (thanks John Odom) I am going to do this

 private static DateTime GetCurrentDateTimeNoMilliseconds()
        {
            var currentTime = DateTime.UtcNow;
            return new DateTime(currentTime.Ticks - (currentTime.Ticks % TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond), currentTime.Kind);
        }

barely less horrific.. but it does preserve the 'kind' of datetime which I do care about. My solution did not.

Answer 1

You could implement this as an extension method that allows you to trim a given DateTime to a specified accuracy using the underlying Ticks:

public static DateTime Trim(this DateTime date, long ticks) {
   return new DateTime(date.Ticks - (date.Ticks % ticks), date.Kind);
}

Then it is easy to trim your date to all kinds of accuracies like so:

DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
DateTime nowTrimmedToSeconds = now.Trim(TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond);
DateTime nowTrimmedToMinutes = now.Trim(TimeSpan.TicksPerMinute);

Answer 2

You can use this constructor:

public DateTime(
    int year,
    int month,
    int day,
    int hour,
    int minute,
    int second
)

so it would be:

DateTime dt = DateTime.Now;
DateTime secondsDt = new DateTime(dt.Year, dt.Month, dt.Day, dt.Hour, dt.Minute, dt.Second);