Need syntax help formatting a dateTime from a databinder.eval

[darrel]

I'm binding fileinformation to a repeater and attempting to display the
'lastWriteTime' property as a formatted date.

This:

<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "LastWriteTime" %>

Gives me the full date/time.

This:

<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "{MM/DD/YYYY}" %>

Gives me a ' Overload resolution failed because no accessible 'ToString' can
be called without a narrowing conversion: '

Aha! It's not returning a dateTime value, but rather a string. Short of
parsing this string with regex or something, is there a way to get it to
return an actual dateTime value so I can use the format string on it?

-Darrel

 

[Matt Berther]

Hello darrel,

How about

DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "LastWriteTime", "{0:d}"

Look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...globalizationdatetimeformatinfoclasstopic.asp
for information about the formatting patterns available.

For example: {0:F} is a FullDateTimePattern

 

[Eliyahu Goldin]

Darrel,

You should convert it ItemDataBound event in normal way, no regex is needed.

A c# example (assuming you are formatting column #2):

private void myGrid_ItemDataBound(object sender,
System.Web.UI.WebControls.DataGridItemEventArgs e)
{
ListItemType itemType = e.Item.ItemType;
if ((itemType == ListItemType.Pager) ||
(itemType == ListItemType.Header) ||
(itemType == ListItemType.Footer))
{
return;
}
e.Item.Cells[2].Text=System.Convert.ToDateTime
(e.Item.Cells[2].Text).ToString(formatExpression);
}

Eliyahu

 

[Eliyahu Goldin]

Matt,

As Darrel said, the column value comes as a string. Your reference is good
for DateTime values, not for strings.

Eliyahu

 

[darrel]

Eliyahu and Matt:

Thank you both. Actually, I ended up getting it to work by casting from
string to date back to string with the format:

<%# ctype(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "LastWriteTime"),
date).tostring("d") %>

It seems redundant to me, but seems to work!

-Darrel