Get DateTime Now with milliseconds precision

Question

How can I exactly construct a time stamp of actual time with milliseconds precision    I need something like 16 4 2013 9 48 00 123  Is this possible  I have an application  where I sample values 10 times per second  and I need to show them in a graph

User · Answer

The trouble with DateTime UtcNow and DateTime Now is that  depending on the computer and operating system  it may only be accurate to between 10 and 15 milliseconds   However  on windows computers one can use by using the low level function GetSystemTimePreciseAsFileTime to get microsecond accuracy  see the function GetTimeStamp   below        System Security SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity  System Runtime InteropServices DllImport  kernel32 dll        static extern void GetSystemTimePreciseAsFileTime out FileTime pFileTime         System Runtime InteropServices StructLayout System Runtime InteropServices LayoutKind Sequential       public struct FileTime            public const long FILETIME TO DATETIMETICKS   504911232000000000       146097   days in 400 year Gregorian calendar cycle  504911232000000000   4   146097   86400   1E7         public uint TimeLow        least significant digits         public uint TimeHigh       most sifnificant digits         public long TimeStamp FileTimeTicks   get   return TimeHigh   4294967296   TimeLow             ticks since 1-Jan-1601  1 tick   100 nanosecs   4294967296   2 32         public DateTime dateTime   get   return new DateTime TimeStamp FileTimeTicks   FILETIME TO DATETIMETICKS                  public static DateTime GetTimeStamp              FileTime ft  GetSystemTimePreciseAsFileTime out ft           return ft dateTime

User · Answer

try using datetime now ticks   this provides nanosecond precision  taking the delta of two ticks  stoptick - starttick  10 000 is the millisecond of specified interval   https   docs microsoft com en-us dotnet api system datetime ticks view netframework-4 7 2

User · Answer

Use DateTime Structure with milliseconds and format like this   string timestamp   DateTime UtcNow ToString  yyyy-MM-dd HH mm ss fff    CultureInfo InvariantCulture   timestamp   timestamp Replace  -

User · Answer

I was looking for a similar solution  base on what was suggested on this thread  I use the following      DateTime Now ToString  MM dd yyyy hh mm ss fff      and it work like charm  Note  that  fff are the precision numbers that you wish to capture

User · Answer

public long millis       return  long MaxValue   DateTime Now ToBinary      10000      If you want microseconds  just change 10000 to 10  and if you want the 10th of micro  delete   10000

User · Answer

This should work   DateTime Now ToString  hh mm ss ffffff      If you don t need it to be displayed and just need to know the time difference  well don t convert it to a String  Just leave it as  DateTime Now     And use TimeSpan to know the difference between time intervals   Example  DateTime start  TimeSpan time   start   DateTime Now     Do something here  time   DateTime Now - start  label1 Text   String Format   0   1    time Seconds  time Milliseconds ToString   PadLeft 3   0

User · Answer

How can I exactly construct a time stamp of actual time with milliseconds precision    I suspect you mean millisecond accuracy  DateTime has a lot of precision  but is fairly coarse in terms of accuracy  Generally speaking  you can t  Usually the system clock  which is where DateTime Now gets its data from  has a resolution of around 10-15 ms  See Eric Lippert s blog post about precision and accuracy for more details   If you need more accurate timing than this  you may want to look into using an NTP client   However  it s not clear that you really need millisecond accuracy here  If you don t care about the exact timing - you just want to show the samples in the right order  with  pretty good  accuracy  then the system clock should be fine  I d advise you to use DateTime UtcNow rather than DateTime Now though  to avoid time zone issues around daylight saving transitions  etc   If your question is actually just around converting a DateTime to a string with millisecond precision  I d suggest using   string timestamp   DateTime UtcNow ToString  yyyy-MM-dd HH mm ss fff                                               CultureInfo InvariantCulture      Note that unlike your sample  this is sortable and less likely to cause confusion around whether it s meant to be  month day year  or  day month year

User · Answer

If you still want a date instead of a string like the other answers  just add this extension method   public static DateTime ToMillisecondPrecision this DateTime d        return new DateTime d Year  d Month  d Day  d Hour  d Minute                          d Second  d Millisecond  d Kind

User · Answer

Pyromancer s answer seems pretty good to me  but maybe you wanted   DateTime Now Millisecond   But if you are comparing dates  TimeSpan is the way to go

User · Answer

DateTime Now ToString  ddMMyyyyhhmmssffff

User · Answer

As far as I understand the question  you can go for   DateTime dateTime   DateTime Now  DateTime dateTimeInMilliseconds   dateTime AddTicks -1   dateTime Ticks   10000      This will cut off ticks smaller than 1 millisecond

[c#] Get DateTime.Now with milliseconds precision

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