How to get time from DateTime in C#?

There are three ways to get time form DateTime in C#:

• Using TimeSpan - Best way for code cleaness.
• Using DateTime - Best if you need to use DateTime type.
• Using string format - Best way for displaying in an interface.

How to get time from DateTime in C#?

The best way to get time from DateTime in C# is to:

1. Access the TimeOfDay property of DateTime to get TimeSpan value for your DateTime.
2. Access the Hours property of TimeSpan to get the hour of the DateTime.
3. Access the Minutes property of TimeSpan to get the minutes of the DateTime.
4. Access the Seconds property of TimeSpan to get the seconds of the DateTime.

The code below shows how to get time from DateTime:

TimeSpan currentTime = DateTime.Now.TimeOfDay; 
Console.WriteLine(currentTime); // 19:10:30.1729426
Console.WriteLine(currentTime.Hours); // 19
Console.WriteLine(currentTime.Minutes); // 10
Console.WriteLine(currentTime.Seconds); // 30

TimeOfDay property

The source code of the DateTime struct shows how the TimeOfDay property is calculated:

// Returns the time-of-day part of this DateTime. The returned value
// is a TimeSpan that indicates the time elapsed since midnight.
//
public TimeSpan TimeOfDay {
    get {
        return new TimeSpan(InternalTicks % TicksPerDay);
    }
}

Get time from DateTime using DateTime type

Alternative for getting time from DateTime is to use the DateTime type with date of 1/1/0001.

The idea is to ignore the date portion of the time.

The code below shows how to get time from current DateTime:

DateTime timeOnly = new DateTime(DateTime.Now.TimeOfDay.Ticks);
Console.WriteLine(timeOnly); // 1/1/0001 7:10:30 PM

We can still access the hour, minutes, and seconds properties, but the intent is not as clear as using TimeSpan.

Get time from DateTime using ToString method

Another way to get only time from DateTime is to use ToString method:

DateTime currentTime = DateTime.Parse("6/19/2022 12:34:12 AM");

Console.WriteLine(currentTime.ToString("HH:mm")); // 00:34
Console.WriteLine(currentTime.ToString("hh:mm tt")); // 12:34 AM
Console.WriteLine(currentTime.ToString("H:mm")); // 0:34
Console.WriteLine(currentTime.ToString("h:mm tt")); // 12:34 AM

This method is the best way of getting time from DateTime if your main goal is to display time in an interface because it gives you the most flexibility in choosing a human-readable format.

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