Formatting nullable DateTime fields in strong typed View

Question

I have a Person class with a BornDate property in my model defined as

[DisplayName("Born Date")]
public DateTime? BornDate { get; set; }

I use this field in my view as

<td style="white-space:nowrap">
    <%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.BornDate)%>
    <br />
    <%= Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.BornDate, new { id = "bornDate" })%>
    <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.BornDate, "*")%>
</td>

The problem is that when I am editing a Person instance with the BornDate text box is formatted as

dd/MM/yyyy hh.mm.ss

while I would like to format it without the time part ("dd/MM/yyyy"). I am not able to use the toString method with the format string because it is a nullable field.

what can I do?

Answer 1

You should be able to use Value. Just check it isn't null first.

var displayDate = model.BornDate.HasValue ? model.BornDate.Value.ToString("yyyy") : "NoDate";