Working with dates and times in VB.NET

by Irina Medvinskaya | Jun 29, 2006 5:32:00 PM

Tags: Microsoft development tools, Irina Medvinskaya, Microsoft Visual Basic.Net, DateTime, DateTime value, Visual Basic Tips Newsletter

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Takeaway: VB.NET's DateTime structure represents an instant in time. Irina Medvinskaya discusses how to utilize DateTime properties and methods so you can work with DateTime values in VB.NET.

VB.NET's DateTime structure represents an instant in time and is usually expressed as a particular date and time of the day. DateTime comes in handy whenever you need to determine the system's date and time; it also performs various operations on date/time variables. In this article, I show how to utilize DateTime properties and methods so you can work with DateTime values in VB.NET.

Here are listings of the most commonly used properties and methods of the DateTime structure.

Properties

Date: returns the date component of the DateTime value.
Day: returns the day of the month component of the DateTime value.
DayOfWeek: returns the day of the week component of the DateTime value.
DayOfYear: returns the day of the year component of the DateTime value.
Hour: returns the hour component of the DateTime value.
Millisecond: returns the milliseconds component of the DateTime value.
Minute: returns the minute component of the DateTime value.
Month: returns the month component of the DateTime value.
Now: returns a DateTime value that is the current local date and time on this computer.
Second: returns the seconds component of the DateTime value.
TimeOfDay: returns the time of day of the DateTime value.
Today: returns the current system date.
UtcNow: returns a DateTime value that is the current local date and time on this computer expressed as the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Year: returns the year component of the DateTime value.

Methods

Add: adds the value of the specified TimeSpan to the DateTime value.
AddDays: adds the specified number of days to the DateTime value.
AddHours: adds the specified number of hours to the DateTime value.
AddMilliseconds: adds the specified number of milliseconds to the DateTime value.
AddMinutes: adds the specified number of minutes to the DateTime value.
AddMonths: adds the specified number of months to the DateTime value.
AddSeconds: adds the specified number of seconds to the DateTime value.
AddYears: adds the specified number of years to the DateTime value.
DaysInMonth: returns the number of days in the specified month of the specified year.
IsLeapYear: returns an indication of whether the specified year is a leap year.
Subtract: subtracts the specified time or duration from the DateTime value.
ToLocalTime: converts the current Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to local time.
ToLongDateString: converts the value of this instance to its equivalent long date string representation.
ToLongTimeString: converts the value of this instance to its equivalent long time string representation.
ToShortDateString: converts the value of this instance to its equivalent short date string representation.
ToShortTimeString: converts the value of this instance to its equivalent short time string representation.
ToUniversalTime: converts the current local time to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

An example

The following sample code demonstrates how to get the system's DateTime:

Dim Now AsDateTime = DateTime.Now
MessageBox.Show(Now)

We define a variable Now as a DateTime and set it to the property Now of the DateTime structure. The result of Now is the current system's DateTime value.

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