WPF Binding StringFormat Short Date String

Some DateTime StringFormat samples I found useful. Lifted from C# Examples

DateTime dt = new DateTime(2008, 3, 9, 16, 5, 7, 123);

String.Format("{0:y yy yyy yyyy}", dt);  // "8 08 008 2008"   year
String.Format("{0:M MM MMM MMMM}", dt);  // "3 03 Mar March"  month
String.Format("{0:d dd ddd dddd}", dt);  // "9 09 Sun Sunday" day
String.Format("{0:h hh H HH}",     dt);  // "4 04 16 16"      hour 12/24
String.Format("{0:m mm}",          dt);  // "5 05"            minute
String.Format("{0:s ss}",          dt);  // "7 07"            second
String.Format("{0:f ff fff ffff}", dt);  // "1 12 123 1230"   sec.fraction
String.Format("{0:F FF FFF FFFF}", dt);  // "1 12 123 123"    without zeroes
String.Format("{0:t tt}",          dt);  // "P PM"            A.M. or P.M.
String.Format("{0:z zz zzz}",      dt);  // "-6 -06 -06:00"   time zone

Try this:

<TextBlock Text="{Binding PropertyPath, StringFormat=d}" />

which is culture sensitive and requires .NET 3.5 SP1 or above.

NOTE: This is case sensitive. "d" is the short date format specifier while "D" is the long date format specifier.

There's a full list of string format on the MSDN page on Standard Date and Time Format Strings and a fuller explanation of all the options on this MSDN blog post

However, there is one gotcha with this - it always outputs the date in US format unless you set the culture to the correct value yourself.

If you do not set this property, the binding engine uses the Language property of the binding target object. In XAML this defaults to "en-US" or inherits the value from the root element (or any element) of the page, if one has been explicitly set.

Source

One way to do this is in the code behind (assuming you've set the culture of the thread to the correct value):

this.Language = XmlLanguage.GetLanguage(Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name);

The other way is to set the converter culture in the binding:

<TextBlock Text="{Binding PropertyPath, StringFormat=d, ConverterCulture=en-GB}" />

Though this doesn't allow you to localise the output.

Use the StringFormat property (or ContentStringFormat on ContentControl and its derivatives, e.g. Label).

<TextBlock Text="{Binding Date, StringFormat={}{0:d}}" />

Note the {} prior to the standard String.Format positional argument notation allows the braces to be escaped in the markup extension language.

Or use this for an English (or mix it up for custom) format:

StringFormat='{}{0:dd/MM/yyyy}'