European date format and strings

[eDanny]

I have an indicator which compares some strings that hold dates in US format of "MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm:ss" and it has come to my attention from a European user that the indicator fails because of the difference in the Date format (DD/MM/YYYY). To get around it I have used this:

if(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name == "en-US")
{
Do something with the US formatted strings
}
else
{
Do something with alternate Euro strings
}

Since working with time and dates makes my head spin, my question is should I be doing this in a better way?

Dan

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Dan, one idea would be working for example into UTC only and then converting back to user time as needed -

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.touniversaltime.aspx

If you don't want to work with DateTime objects, you could work with ToTime() & ToDay() to convert those to integers.

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/HelpGuideV6/ToTime.html

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/HelpGuideV6/ToDay.html

[Ralph]

Dan,

if it is you who creates the strings, you could use the invariant format for the time/date-string-formatting:

DateTimeFormatInfo.InvariantInfo;

It doesn't change the used time zones but it provides an unique format very similar to the american style.

Regards
Ralph

P.S: There is no european style for Date/Time. For example even the string format of british an german Date/Time values would differ.

[eDanny]

Dan, one idea would be working for example into UTC only and then converting back to user time as needed -

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.touniversaltime.aspx

If you don't want to work with DateTime objects, you could work with ToTime() & ToDay() to convert those to integers.

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/HelpGuideV6/ToTime.html

http://www.ninjatrader-support.com/H...eV6/ToDay.html

Thanks Bertrand but it is the Date format that causes the problem, not Time so I believe using any conversions to UTC would have no effect. Ralph, are you saying there is a format for Date strings that can be read universally? I may need to get more info from you about that. Dan

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Dan, you're right would apply only to the time component as a quick test showed - perhaps the the From / To binary method is of value for your endavour?

[Ralph]

Dan, here is a quick test. I executed the following code with german time:

Print(Time[0].ToString());
Print(Time[0].ToString(DateTimeFormatInfo.InvariantInfo));

And here is the result. The first line is the native string and the second line the invariant version. If you execute this code on your side, your invariant result should have the same syntax:

25.03.2010 18:39:02
03/25/2010 18:39:02

Don't forget to insert:
using System.Globalization;

Regards,
Ralph

[dave1992]

On a wider note, I'd like to remind you about this thread (which is closed, but not resolved)

http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/forum/showthread.php?t=33293

I realise it's not on your radar much, but it's really irritating to those of us outside the US..