How do I pass a datetime value as a URI parameter in asp.net mvc?

Question

I need to have an action parameter that has a datetime value? Is there a standard way to do this? I need to have something like:

mysite/Controller/Action/21-9-2009 10:20

but I'm only succeeding indoing it with something like:

mysite/Controller/Action/200909211020

and writing a custome function to deal with this format.

Again, looking for a standard or sanctioned ASP.net MVC way to do this.

Answer 1

The colon in your first example's url is going to cause an error (Bad Request) so you can't do exactly what you are looking for. Other than that, using a DateTime as an action parameter is most definitely possible.

If you are using the default routing, this 3rd portion of your example url is going to pickup the DateTime value as the {id} parameter. So your Action method might look like this:

public ActionResult Index(DateTime? id)
{
    return View();
}

You'll probably want to use a Nullable Datetime as I have, so if this parameter isn't included it won't cause an exception. Of course, if you don't want it to be named "id" then add another route entry replacing {id} with your name of choice.

As long as the text in the url will parse to a valid DateTime value, this is all you have to do. Something like the following works fine and will be picked up in your Action method without any errors:

<%=Html.ActionLink("link", "Index", new { id = DateTime.Now.ToString("dd-MM-yyyy") }) %>

The catch, in this case of course, is that I did not include the time. I'm not sure there are any ways to format a (valid) date string with the time not represented with colons, so if you MUST include the time in the url, you may need to use your own format and parse the result back into a DateTime manually. Say we replace the colon with a "!" in the actionlink: new { id = DateTime.Now.ToString("dd-MM-yyyy HH!mm") }.

Your action method will fail to parse this as a date so the best bet in this case would probably to accept it as a string:

public ActionResult Index(string id)
{
    DateTime myDate;
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(id))
    {
        myDate = DateTime.Parse(id.Replace("!", ":"));
    }
    return View();
}

Edit: As noted in the comments, there are some other solutions arguably better than mine. When I originally wrote this answer I believe I was trying to preserve the essence of the date time format as best possible, but clearly URL encoding it would be a more proper way of handling this. +1 to Vlad's comment.