Does anyone know how to localize date ranges using C#?
In particular, I want to generate "smart" date ranges, so that redundant information is eliminated.
Here are some examples in US English
Form what I can tell the .NET Framework has support for localizing dates, but not ranges of dates.
Using the information in System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo
for the Windows locales that CultureInfo
supports, I was able to figure out (most of the time) how to do items #1 and #2. Item #2 is just DateTime.ToString(DateTimeFormatInfo.YearMonthFormat)
. Using YearMonthFormat
I was also able to deduce formats to use for #1 for most languages. For the few that I couldn't I just duplicate the year.
Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to do items #3-#5 using the .NET Framework. Outlook formats ranges using those formats, so I was hoping there might be some Win32 APIs that would do it, but a Google search for "Win32 Date Range localization" yielded nothing useful.
I like the enhanced usability provided by "smart range formating", and I would like my customers that are not using English versions of Windows to get the same benefits.
Does any one know how to do that in a culture-dependent manner?
Date and time localization is quite an important topic when it comes to developing applications and software systems in multiple languages. Date and time are written and read in different ways in different countries.
DateFormat is used for formatting a date into String based on specific locale that is provided as input. The locale is used for specifying the region and language for making the code more locale to the user. The way of writing date is different in different regions of the world.
Locale determines the human language and cultural norms used when generating a String to represent a date-time value. The time zone determines the wall-clock time of a particular region used to represent a moment on the timeline.
Good question and it does seem to be something that the .NET framework and other languages seem to be missing too. I would guess the presentation of the results depends upon your application.
Outlook has very good date understanding as an input (as does Google calenders), but I haven't personally seen this form of expression as an output (e.g. displayed to the user).
Some recommendations:
I would guess that from your term 'localize' you plan to internationalize the output, if that is the case you are going to have a hard job catching all of the cases, it doesn't seem to be information stored in most of the typical internationalization data sets.
Concentrating on English from your example, you seem to have a number of rules already defined in the code:
I know the above is only looking at English, but in my view, it doesn't look too hard to roll yourself, too much to write in this editor though!
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine(DateRange.Generate(2009, 08, 01, 2009, 09, 31));
Console.WriteLine(DateRange.Generate(2009, 08, 01, 2009, 08, 31));
Console.WriteLine(DateRange.Generate(2009, 08, 01, 2009, 08, 09));
Console.WriteLine(DateRange.Generate(2009, 01, 01, 2009, 03, 03));
Console.WriteLine(DateRange.Generate(2009, 12, 06, 2010, 01, 08));
// Same dates
Console.WriteLine(DateRange.Generate(2009, 08, 01, 2009, 08, 01));
}
}
static class DateRange
{
private static string[] Months = {
"January", "February", "March", "April",
"May", "June", "July", "August",
"September", "October", "November", "December"
};
public static string Generate(
int startYear, int startMonth, int startDay,
int endYear, int endMonth, int endDay)
{
bool yearsSame = startYear == endYear;
bool monthsSame = startMonth == endMonth;
bool wholeMonths = (startDay == 1 && IsLastDay(endDay, endMonth));
if ( monthsSame && yearsSame && startDay == endDay)
{
return string.Format("{0} {1}, {2}", startDay, Month(startMonth), startYear);
}
if (monthsSame)
{
if (yearsSame)
{
return wholeMonths
? string.Format("{0} {1}", Month(startMonth), endYear)
: string.Format("{0} {1} - {2}, {3}", Month(endMonth), startDay, endDay, endYear);
}
return wholeMonths
? string.Format("{0}, {1} - {2}, {3}",
Month(startMonth), startYear,
Month(endMonth), endYear)
: string.Format("{0} {1}, {2} - {3} {4}, {5}",
Month(startMonth), startDay, startYear,
Month(endMonth), endDay, endYear);
}
if (yearsSame)
{
return wholeMonths
? string.Format("{0} - {1}, {2}", Month(startMonth), Month(endMonth), endYear)
: string.Format("{0} {1} - {2} {3}, {4}",
Month(startMonth), startDay,
Month(endMonth), endDay,
endYear);
}
return wholeMonths
? string.Format("{0}, {1} - {2}, {3}",
Month(startMonth), startYear,
Month(endMonth), endYear)
: string.Format("{0} {1}, {2} - {3} {4}, {5}",
Month(startMonth), startDay, startYear,
Month(endMonth), endDay, endYear);
}
private static string Month(int month)
{
return Months[month - 1];
}
public static bool IsLastDay(int day, int month)
{
switch (month+1)
{
case 2:
// Not leap-year aware
return (day == 28 || day == 29);
case 1: case 3: case 5: case 7: case 8: case 10: case 12:
return (day == 31);
case 4: case 6: case 9: case 11:
return (day == 30);
default:
return false;
}
}
}
This yields the same output (almost, Sept becomes September in mine) as the original question:
August - September, 2009
August 1 - 31, 2009
August 1 - 9, 2009
January 1 - March 3, 2009
December 6, 2009 - January 8, 2010
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With