Is there a way to quickly / easily parse Unix time in C# ? I'm brand new at the language, so if this is a painfully obvious question, I apologize. IE I have a string in the format [seconds since Epoch].[milliseconds]. Is there an equivalent to Java's SimpleDateFormat in C# ?
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9 Answers
Simplest way is probably to use something like:
private static readonly DateTime Epoch = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0,
DateTimeKind.Utc);
...
public static DateTime UnixTimeToDateTime(string text)
{
double seconds = double.Parse(text, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
return Epoch.AddSeconds(seconds);
}
Three things to note:
- If your strings are definitely of the form "x.y" rather than "x,y" you should use the invariant culture as shown above, to make sure that "." is parsed as a decimal point
- You should specify UTC in the
DateTimeconstructor to make sure it doesn't think it's a local time. - If you're using .NET 3.5 or higher, you might want to consider using
DateTimeOffsetinstead ofDateTime.
Comments
This is a very common thing people in C# do, yet there is no library for that.
I created this mini library https://gist.github.com/1095252 to make my life (I hope yours too) easier.
Comments
// This is an example of a UNIX timestamp for the date/time 11-04-2005 09:25.
double timestamp = 1113211532;
// First make a System.DateTime equivalent to the UNIX Epoch.
System.DateTime dateTime = new System.DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
// Add the number of seconds in UNIX timestamp to be converted.
dateTime = dateTime.AddSeconds(timestamp);
// The dateTime now contains the right date/time so to format the string,
// use the standard formatting methods of the DateTime object.
string printDate = dateTime.ToShortDateString() +" "+ dateTime.ToShortTimeString();
// Print the date and time
System.Console.WriteLine(printDate);
Comments
var date = (new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Utc))
.AddSeconds(
double.Parse(yourString, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
1 Comment
Jon Skeet
That will end up with a DateTimeKind of unspecified, I believe. It will also use the local culture to determine the decimal point format.
I realize this is a fairly old question but I figured I'd post my solution which used Nodatime's Instant class which has a method specifically for this.
Instant.FromSecondsSinceUnixEpoch(longSecondsSinceEpoch).ToDateTimeUtc();
I totally get that maybe pulling in Nodatime might be heavy for some folks. For my projects where dependency bloat isn't a major concern I'd rather rely on maintained library solutions rather than having to maintain my own.
Comments
Since .NET 4.6, you can use DateTimeOffset.FromUnixTimeSeconds() and DateTimeOffset.FromUnixTimeMilliseconds():
long unixTime = 1600000000;
DateTimeOffset dto = DateTimeOffset.FromUnixTimeSeconds(unixTime);
DateTime dt = dto.DateTime;
Comments
This is from a blog posting by Stefan Henke:
private string conv_Timestamp2Date (int Timestamp)
{
// calculate from Unix epoch
System.DateTime dateTime = new System.DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
// add seconds to timestamp
dateTime = dateTime.AddSeconds(Timestamp);
string Date = dateTime.ToShortDateString() +", "+ dateTime.ToShortTimeString();
return Date;
}
Comments
Hooray for MSDN DateTime docs! Also see TimeSpan.
// First make a System.DateTime equivalent to the UNIX Epoch.
System.DateTime dateTime = new System.DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
// Add the number of seconds in UNIX timestamp to be converted.
dateTime = dateTime.AddSeconds(numSeconds);
// Then add the number of milliseconds
dateTime = dateTime.Add(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(numMilliseconds));
1 Comment
OregonGhost
The edited version of your post is fine. However, the first version was really unhelpful, since the linked MSDN page does not have a sample for UNIX timestamps, nor does DateTime have a built-in function you could have found through that page. Now that you've edited the answer, it's just the same as the others.
Here it is as a handy extension method
public static DateTime UnixTime(this string timestamp)
{
var dateTime = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
return dateTime.AddSeconds(int.Parse(timestamp));
}
