How To Set a Date Format In GridView Using ASP.NET 2.0(Using HtmlEncode Property)
Wednesday 24 May 2006 @ 11:57 am

How To Set a Date Format In GridView Using ASP.NET 2.0

(Using HtmlEncode Property)

(AKA, the DataFormatString=”{0:M-dd-yyyy}” Problem)

 

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A very common desire is to set a column of a gridview to display just the month, day and year of a DateTime type. The problem is the by default, the HtmlEncode property of the boundfield attribute ( <asp:boundfield …) is set to True. The reason for this (as pointed out in the documentation of this attribute) is that this helps prevent cross-site scripting attacks and malicious content from being displayed. Microsoft recommends that the HtmlEncode attribute be enabled whenever possible.

The problem is that if this field is enabled, you can not pass format information to the boundfield control. That is, if you try the following code, you will not get the desired result.

 
<asp :GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server">
<columns>
  <asp :BoundField DataField="CreationDate"
     DataFormatString="{0:M-dd-yyyy}"
     HeaderText="CreationDate"   />
</columns>
</asp>

You have two choices to make this work as you would expect. The first choice is to simply set HtmlEncode to false as follows:

 
<asp :GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server">
<columns>
  <asp :BoundField DataField="CreationDate"
     DataFormatString="{0:M-dd-yyyy}"
     HtmlEncode="false"
     HeaderText="CreationDate"    />
</columns>
</asp>

The second choice is to make the column a template and simply set the format string directly in the Label or Text Fields as follows.

 
<asp :GridView ID="GridView3" runat="server"  >
 <columns>
  <asp :TemplateField HeaderText="CreationDate" >
   <edititemtemplate>
    <asp :Label ID="Label1" runat="server"
      Text='<%# Eval("CreationDate", "{0:M-dd-yyyy}") %>'>
    </asp>
   </edititemtemplate>
   <itemtemplate>
    <asp :Label ID="Label1" runat="server"
      Text='<%# Bind("CreationDate", "{0:M-dd-yyyy}") %>'>
    </asp>
   </itemtemplate>
  </asp>
 </columns>
</asp>

Below is a screen shot of what the three scenarios discussed above look like.

Output of all three scenarios

 


Good luck with your coding and hopefully, this will be one nasty you can put behind you.
Comments (82) - Posted in .Net 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0  



82 Responses to “How To Set a Date Format In GridView Using ASP.NET 2.0(Using HtmlEncode Property)”

  1. ozan Says:
    June 22nd, 2006 at 2:34 am

    Than You very much about your explaining. it works :)

  2. Chris Says:
    July 7th, 2006 at 10:43 am

    Thanks this was helpful to me.

  3. Nick Says:
    July 10th, 2006 at 12:56 pm

    Nice article. I like how you demonstrate in a couple different ways, cheers.

  4. Peter Says:
    July 11th, 2006 at 3:42 am

    Peter,

    Thanks for this – was driving me mad !

    Rgds, Peter

  5. Jason Shaffer Says:
    August 9th, 2006 at 6:07 am

    What if I dynamically bind data to the gridview?

  6. fiza Says:
    August 25th, 2006 at 7:17 pm

    its very very helpfull..tq for that…

  7. De Block Maarten Says:
    August 29th, 2006 at 2:56 am

    Thank you!

  8. Sarfaraj Sayyad Says:
    September 13th, 2006 at 3:00 am

    fantastic ! This code work
    Thanks man

  9. Viral Says:
    September 13th, 2006 at 5:06 am

    It is very great it work in my project.
    Thanks you very much…

  10. Daren Says:
    September 25th, 2006 at 10:11 pm

    Nice work Peter,

    thanks.

  11. Isen Says:
    October 10th, 2006 at 6:24 am

    Helped me out, thanks.

  12. Jay K Says:
    November 17th, 2006 at 12:56 pm

    thanks a lot man. it was very helpful.

  13. Chris Says:
    November 17th, 2006 at 1:11 pm

    I have to join in with all the other kudo’s — this simple problem was very irritating — thanks for the complete explanation.

  14. Ofertas de Empleo Says:
    November 24th, 2006 at 1:24 am

    Thanks very usefful code. any way to format the bind text with a custom function?

  15. Vladimir Says:
    December 1st, 2006 at 8:01 pm

    Thanks! Nice work!

  16. Fawad Says:
    December 4th, 2006 at 9:07 pm

    Nice, thanks

  17. McCulloch Says:
    December 19th, 2006 at 11:44 am

    Thanks, it helped.

  18. zahorjana Says:
    January 18th, 2007 at 8:00 am

    Thanks!Thanks!Thanks!Thanks!
    very nice, thanks!

  19. KD Says:
    January 25th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

    I have GridView binding to BLL object returning ArrayList.
    How can I set DataFormatString programatically using GridView’s DataBinding or DataBound event?
    Desing time it works.
    DataFormatString of (###) ###-#### will work with formatting phone numbers in column?

  20. Dmitriy K Says:
    January 30th, 2007 at 2:43 pm

    Great stuff, thanks.

  21. beginer Says:
    January 31st, 2007 at 5:14 am

    help..HtmlEncode statement is not recognized

  22. Ruby Says:
    February 2nd, 2007 at 8:01 pm

    Very useful! Thank a lot!

  23. Rajan Says:
    February 5th, 2007 at 7:21 am

    very helpful, thankyou.

  24. kburn Says:
    February 16th, 2007 at 2:44 am

    nice try.
    u got me out of a crappy situation :P

    thank u!

  25. Uncle Lar Says:
    February 28th, 2007 at 10:23 am

    Bravo, Peter, this was great help!
    Merci beau coup.

  26. shrish Says:
    April 3rd, 2007 at 11:11 pm

    Thanks,Its really Useful.

  27. ThinkTank Says:
    April 22nd, 2007 at 2:25 am

    Thank you so much, now I can stop having nightmares.

  28. Tome Says:
    April 22nd, 2007 at 4:14 pm

    This worked great for display, but when trying to update it throws – System.FormatException, String was not recognized as a valid DateTime, anyone with suggestions.

  29. Asmat Khan Says:
    May 16th, 2007 at 8:36 pm

    Well done peter
    Thanks

  30. John Uhrich Says:
    May 17th, 2007 at 5:06 pm

    Thanks so much! I was beating my head against the wall!!

  31. Zero Says:
    May 25th, 2007 at 4:12 am

    Great Job! thanks

  32. Bernie Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 11:45 am

    Vey helpful. Thanks

  33. Mihail Says:
    June 7th, 2007 at 4:37 am

    how to bind in GridView custom DatePicker Control to Null Value.
    Here is code.
    —————————————

    ‘
    CalendarFont-Names=”Arial” InitialText=”Select a Date” TextBoxWidth=”80″ AutoPosition=”True” CalendarOffsetX=”-200px” CalendarOffsetY=”25px” CalendarTheme=”None” CalendarWidth=”200px” CallbackEventReference=”" Culture=”Bulgarian (Bulgaria)” EnableDropShadow=”True” MaxDate=”9999-12-31″ MinDate=”" NextMonthText=”>” NoneButtonText=”None” ShowNoneButton=”True” ShowTodayButton=”True” ZIndex=”1″>

    ‘>

    —————————————-

  34. Prashant Says:
    September 7th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    Thanks for your insightful article.
    Warmest Regards

  35. Danny Says:
    September 18th, 2007 at 1:50 am

    How to do this if dynamically binding data in code behind?

  36. Kusno Says:
    October 4th, 2007 at 2:35 am

    Thanks man, this is that i’m looking for.

  37. Paula Says:
    October 16th, 2007 at 2:24 pm

    Why is this not working for me I have done exactly what was explained

  38. Amitabh Says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 11:50 pm

    Thanks man, it worked for me too !!!

  39. int Says:
    October 19th, 2007 at 7:07 am

    hmmm coool

  40. Nick Says:
    November 7th, 2007 at 1:53 pm

    Good article, but the HtmlEncode=”False” isn’t doing the trick for me. I’m trying to dynamically bind to a GridView with the following code:

    Dim gv As New GridView()
    gv.DataSource = dt
    gv.AutoGenerateColumns = False

    For Each col As Data.DataColumn In dt.Columns
    Dim myBoundField As New BoundField()
    With myBoundField
    Select Case col.ColumnName
    Case “DtReadingFrom”
    .HeaderText = “Start Date”
    .DataFormatString = “{0:MM/dd/yyyy}”
    .HtmlEncode = False
    Case “DtReadingTo”
    .HeaderText = “End Date”
    .DataFormatString = “{0:MM/dd/yyyy}”
    .HtmlEncode = False
    Case “TX_METER_NUMBER”
    .HeaderText = “Meter #”
    Case Else
    .HeaderText = col.ColumnName
    End Select

    .DataField = col.ColumnName
    .Visible = True
    End With
    gv.Columns.Add(myBoundField)
    Next

  41. naraga Says:
    February 21st, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    i just want to share with you mine experience. i tried to bind to objectdatasource where property was another custom object which implemented IFormatter. in this case you must ensure that ToString() doesnt return empty string. crazy. i found that out by dissasembling the code of BoundField. i wish i could avoid this rant but code actually looks like it was written by very junior guy..

  42. Eric Says:
    April 22nd, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    Thanks! Exactly what I need.

  43. gaurav Says:
    May 19th, 2008 at 12:07 am

    I tried below code

    but didn’t work.

    Table Column ‘Booking_Date’ is of ‘datatime’ type.

    can anybody explain?

  44. gaurav Says:
    May 19th, 2008 at 12:08 am

    I tried below code

    “”

    but didn’t work.

    Table Column ‘Booking_Date’ is of ‘datatime’ type.

    can anybody explain?

  45. rachel Says:
    June 1st, 2008 at 6:12 am

    10x a lot!!!

  46. Xcalibur Says:
    June 11th, 2008 at 8:19 am

    Absolutely perfect – wonderfully explained thanks mate

  47. Prashant Deepak Vedpathak Says:
    July 29th, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    Hello Sir,
    How to show datetime like
    DataFormatString = “{0:MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM}”

    I tried this but it doesn’t work. I have to export it to excel with AM/PM.

    Thanks,
    Prashant V

  48. hugo Says:
    August 5th, 2008 at 1:58 am

    hello peterkellner
    thanks for your explanation.
    For @Vedpathak:
    How to show datetime like
    DataFormatString = “{0:MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM}”
    ==> try for expression:
    DataFormatString ={0:MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt}
    It will display hour with AM or PM
    Hope to help you.

  49. bard Says:
    August 27th, 2008 at 9:19 pm

    thankz, i solve my problem…

  50. Nic Smith Says:
    September 22nd, 2008 at 4:25 pm

    Does anyone know how I would format just the time? I tried:

    <asp:TextBox ID=”TextBox2″ runat=”server” Text=”>

    <asp:Label ID=”Label2″ runat=”server” Text=”>

    but it doesn’t work. I just get a parcer error.

  51. Nic Smith Says:
    September 22nd, 2008 at 4:27 pm

    Does anyone know how to format just the time? I tried: but it doesn’t work. I just get a parcer error.

  52. Shahid Says:
    October 20th, 2008 at 7:44 am

    :) :) superb

  53. Shahid Says:
    October 20th, 2008 at 7:45 am

    :)

  54. aslam Says:
    November 25th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    great work. solved my problem. thanks alot

  55. Dipesh Says:
    November 26th, 2008 at 1:03 am

    Superb man !!!!
    It wrks excellent….
    thnx man …

  56. Genious Says:
    December 11th, 2008 at 11:00 am

    i would say thanks for your help,

    it certainly saved my time to formate the date in grid view.

    cheers,

  57. Swaroop Says:
    January 6th, 2009 at 6:19 am

    Hooray………………….

    IT worked ………..

    Thanks alot ………

    U Rockzzz………….

  58. Digambar Says:
    January 9th, 2009 at 1:24 am

    To Nic Smith:

    You can format just the date with DataFormatString=”{0:hh:mm:ss tt}” Notice lowercase ‘mm’. Upper case will give months while lowercase will give minutes. It worked for me.

  59. patrick Says:
    January 26th, 2009 at 6:02 pm

    Thanks a lot! This is awesome.

    My question is, if I want to let the user rather than change that text, but give a calendar for them to choose from. How do I do that? I tried the Calendar object, but I could not get it to work.

    That is like… they have the currently chosen date in a label or textfield, then next to it a button (like with an hourglass or somethin) that when they press that, a mini calenday pops up, and they can select the date from there.

  60. Nida Says:
    January 31st, 2009 at 4:26 am

    patrick: if u’r using asp.net..ajax control extensions has ur answer..
    http://www.asp.net/learn/ajax-videos/video-124.aspx

  61. Teena Says:
    March 24th, 2009 at 1:16 am

    Thanks your code really works very well.

  62. Vamsi Says:
    May 20th, 2009 at 10:03 pm

    Cool.. This code Work’s Thks man..!!

  63. Jitendra Tyagi Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 3:11 am

    This article very use full i got my desird soltion on it which i want immediatlty

    Thanks

  64. Chandralekha Says:
    June 22nd, 2009 at 12:46 am

    Thank U Very Much!!
    U Rock!!!!!!

  65. MJ Says:
    July 11th, 2009 at 10:55 am

    Gr8 job!!

  66. Akhtar jahan Says:
    July 14th, 2009 at 11:07 pm

    it works for me .thanks

  67. mixdownx Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 9:55 am

    Great tip ive been trying everything for the last few hours.

    worked perfect for my project

    but a 10 second google search saved the day cheers

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  69. Ujwal Khairnar Says:
    September 16th, 2009 at 11:06 pm

    thank you very much realy

  70. abhishoka Says:
    October 1st, 2009 at 9:50 pm

    thanks a lot.. was searching for this so long…

  71. Shivani Khare(MCA) Says:
    October 10th, 2009 at 5:26 am

    Thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!!
    Its really helps to me

  72. Bilal Sammour Says:
    October 19th, 2009 at 5:11 am

    hi,
    how can i trim string using format?

  73. nadeeka Says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 5:24 am

    thanks…………..

  74. William Jordan Says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:41 am

    Thank you for this tip. It saved me some time.

  75. Just human Says:
    December 2nd, 2009 at 9:39 pm

    Nice tips. I twill be more helpfull to all

  76. MA Says:
    December 4th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    This does not work when you bind a gridview to a collection when the column is a date.

  77. George Rindov Says:
    January 4th, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    Need help to format Phone Number.
    The following code displays the phone number as 10 digits with no space.

    What am I missing?

  78. George Rindov Says:
    January 4th, 2010 at 12:43 pm

    It did not display the code here it is one more time:

    BoundField DataField=”oContactPhone” HeaderText=”Contact Phone”
    ReadOnly=”True” SortExpression=”oContactPhone”
    DataFormatString=”{0:(###) ###-####}”
    HtmlEncode=”False”

  79. Joel Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 4:20 pm

    Thanks for a simple answer with practical examples. Much preferred to wading through all the specific date formats in MSDN.

  80. campingmap Says:
    January 26th, 2010 at 9:29 am

    can somebody show me how to format it from the codebehind? thanks

  81. Vamsee Says:
    February 5th, 2010 at 11:31 am

    its helped me out for my work
    Thanks

  82. PT Sivakumar Says:
    February 6th, 2010 at 11:01 pm

    Very good artical thanks 4 d post…

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