I have an application where I use the Gregorian calendar with DateTime
. Lately, I decided to make the app use the Julian calendar too, if the user demands it (there are still people using this calendar). Things seemed pretty easy at first. I could specify the used calendar in the DateTime constructor:
var calend = new JulianCalendar();
DateTime dt = new DateTime(year, j, i, calend);
I could get the number of days in each month and the day of the week (that seems to be different from the Gregorian calendar!):
int days = calend.GetDaysInMonth(year, month);
DayOfWeek dayOfWeek = dt.DayOfWeek;
Now, what amazed me and troubled me was whe output of DateTime.ToString()
. It seems that it prints the date in the Gregorian calendar:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.juliancalendar%28v=vs.71%29.aspx
Currently, the JulianCalendar is not used by any of the cultures supported by the CultureInfo class; therefore, this class can only be used to calculate dates in the Julian calendar.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9bksd5y7.aspx
Because the Persian calendar cannot be designated as the default calendar for a culture, displaying a date in the Persian calendar requires individual calls to its PersianCalendar.GetMonth, PersianCalendar.GetDayOfMonth, and PersianCalendar.GetYear methods.
So, what's the easiest way to print a date in the Julian calendar?
Using an extension method:
static class JulianPrinter
{
public static string ToString(this DateTime date, string format, CultureInfo ci, Calendar cal)
{
if (format == "D")
return string.Format("{0}, {1} {2} {3}",
ci.DateTimeFormat.GetDayName(cal.GetDayOfWeek(date)),
cal.GetDayOfMonth(date),
ci.DateTimeFormat.MonthGenitiveNames[cal.GetMonth(date) - 1], //ci.DateTimeFormat.GetMonthName(cal.GetMonth(date)),
cal.GetYear(date));
return "";
}
}
...and :
var calend = new JulianCalendar();
DateTime dt = new DateTime(year, j, i, calend);
string printed = dt.ToString("D", ci, calend);