MCTS .NET Certification Station: The December 21, 2012 Date Formatting Example

One of the objectives in Exam 70-536 is to ensure knowledge formatting dates. Specifically in the

Implementing globalization, drawing, and text manipulation functionality in a .NET Framework application section, we see

Format date and time values based on the culture

The .NET framework makes this task pretty straight forward with the System.Globalization namespace. Within this name space there is the CultureInfo class. The CultureInfo class contains all of the specific formatting rules for a specific culture. Cultures are divided up by language and region.

So to exercise this objective we print out a date in five different culture specific formats. We pick the date December 21, 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar as a fun date to use. Links are provided below about this date if you want to see what all of the buzz is about. But onto the code sample

Date Formatted Based on Culture Example


using System;
using System.Globalization;

namespace DateTimeFormatExample
{
   class Program
   {
       static void Main(string[] args)
       {
           //This example is going to show how to format
           // a date for several cultures. We could pick
           // any date for this example, but just for kicks
           // we'll pick December 21, 2012. This date is
           // mysterious to astrologists and conspiracy
           // theorists because it is the end of the Mayan
           // calandar... will it be THE end? Who knows, but
           // we'll use it here for our example.

           // Declare the date December 21, 2012
           DateTime dt = new DateTime(2012, 12, 21, 4, 0, 0);

           //First let's print out for US English
           CultureInfo en_us_ci = new CultureInfo("en-US");
           //Print short date format
           Console.WriteLine("US English " + dt.ToString("d", en_us_ci));

           //Next let's print out for Chinese, PRC
           CultureInfo zh_cn_ci = new CultureInfo("zh-CN");
           Console.WriteLine("Chinese, PRC " + dt.ToString("d", zh_cn_ci));

           //Next let's print out for German (Germany)
           CultureInfo de_de_ci = new CultureInfo("de-DE");
           Console.WriteLine("German (Germany) " + dt.ToString("d", de_de_ci));

           //Next let's print out for Hebrew (Israel)
           CultureInfo he_il_ci = new CultureInfo("he-IL");
           Console.WriteLine("Hebrew (Israel) " + dt.ToString("d", he_il_ci));

           //Next let's print out for Punjabi (India)
           CultureInfo pa_in_ci = new CultureInfo("pa-IN");
           Console.WriteLine("Punjabi (India) " + dt.ToString("d", pa_in_ci));
       }
   }
}