[c#] How can I get the DateTime for the start of the week?

How do I find the start of the week (both Sunday and Monday) knowing just the current time in C#?

Something like:

DateTime.Now.StartWeek(Monday);

This question is related to c# datetime

The answer is


Quickest way I can come up with is:

var sunday = DateTime.Today.AddDays(-(int)DateTime.Today.DayOfWeek);

If you would like any other day of the week to be your start date all you need to do is add the DayOfWeek value to the end

var monday = DateTime.Today.AddDays(-(int)DateTime.Today.DayOfWeek + (int)DayOfWeek.Monday);

var tuesday = DateTime.Today.AddDays(-(int)DateTime.Today.DayOfWeek + (int)DayOfWeek.Tuesday); 

Here is a combination of a few of the answers. It uses an extension method that allows the culture to be passed in, if one is not passed in, the current culture is used. This will give it max flexibility and re-use.

/// <summary>
/// Gets the date of the first day of the week for the date.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="date">The date to be used</param>
/// <param name="cultureInfo">If none is provided, the current culture is used</param>
/// <returns>The date of the beggining of the week based on the culture specifed</returns>
public static DateTime StartOfWeek(this DateTime date, CultureInfo cultureInfo=null) =>         
             date.AddDays(-1 * (7 + (date.DayOfWeek - (cultureInfo??CultureInfo.CurrentCulture).DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek)) % 7).Date;

Example Usage:

public static void TestFirstDayOfWeekExtension() {          
        DateTime date = DateTime.Now;
        foreach(System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture in CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.UserCustomCulture | CultureTypes.SpecificCultures)) {
            Console.WriteLine($"{culture.EnglishName}: {date.ToShortDateString()} First Day of week: {date.StartOfWeek(culture).ToShortDateString()}");
        }
    }

Thanks for the examples. I needed to always use the "CurrentCulture" first day of the week and for an array I needed to know the exact Daynumber.. so here are my first extensions:

public static class DateTimeExtensions
{
    //http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38039/how-can-i-get-the-datetime-for-the-start-of-the-week
    //http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1788508/calculate-date-with-monday-as-dayofweek1
    public static DateTime StartOfWeek(this DateTime dt)
    {
        //difference in days
        int diff = (int)dt.DayOfWeek - (int)CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek; //sunday=always0, monday=always1, etc.

        //As a result we need to have day 0,1,2,3,4,5,6 
        if (diff < 0)
        {
            diff += 7;
        }
        return dt.AddDays(-1 * diff).Date;
    }

    public static int DayNoOfWeek(this DateTime dt)
    {
        //difference in days
        int diff = (int)dt.DayOfWeek - (int)CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek; //sunday=always0, monday=always1, etc.

        //As a result we need to have day 0,1,2,3,4,5,6 
        if (diff < 0)
        {
            diff += 7;
        }
        return diff + 1; //Make it 1..7
    }
}

We like one-liners : Get the difference between the current culture's first day of week and the current day then subtract the number of days from the current day

var weekStartDate = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-((int)now.DayOfWeek - (int)DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.FirstDayOfWeek));

    namespace DateTimeExample
    {
        using System;

        public static class DateTimeExtension
        {
            public static DateTime GetMonday(this DateTime time)
            {
                if (time.DayOfWeek != DayOfWeek.Monday)
                    return GetMonday(time.AddDays(-1)); //Recursive call

                return time;
            }
        }

        internal class Program
        {
            private static void Main()
            {
                Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now.GetMonday());
                Console.ReadLine();
            }
        }
    } 

if you want saturday or sunday or any day of week but not exceeding current week(Sat-Sun) I got you covered with this piece of code.

public static DateTime GetDateInCurrentWeek(this DateTime date, DayOfWeek day)
{
    var temp = date;
    var limit = (int)date.DayOfWeek;
    var returnDate = DateTime.MinValue;

    if (date.DayOfWeek == day) return date;

    for (int i = limit; i < 6; i++)
    {
        temp = temp.AddDays(1);

        if (day == temp.DayOfWeek)
        {
            returnDate = temp;
            break;
        }
    }
    if (returnDate == DateTime.MinValue)
    {
        for (int i = limit; i > -1; i++)
        {
            date = date.AddDays(-1);

            if (day == date.DayOfWeek)
            {
                returnDate = date;
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return returnDate;
}

This would give you the preceding Sunday (I think):

DateTime t = DateTime.Now;
t -= new TimeSpan ((int) t.DayOfWeek, 0, 0, 0);

Let's combine the culture-safe answer and the extension method answer:

public static class DateTimeExtensions
{
    public static DateTime StartOfWeek(this DateTime dt, DayOfWeek startOfWeek)
    {
        System.Globalization.CultureInfo ci = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
        DayOfWeek fdow = ci.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek;
        return DateTime.Today.AddDays(-(DateTime.Today.DayOfWeek- fdow));
    }
}

You could use the excellent Umbrella library:

using nVentive.Umbrella.Extensions.Calendar;
DateTime beginning = DateTime.Now.BeginningOfWeek();

However, they do seem to have stored Monday as the first day of the week (see the property nVentive.Umbrella.Extensions.Calendar.DefaultDateTimeCalendarExtensions.WeekBeginsOn), so that previous localized solution is a bit better. Unfortunate.

Edit: looking closer at the question, it looks like Umbrella might actually work for that too:

// Or DateTime.Now.PreviousDay(DayOfWeek.Monday)
DateTime monday = DateTime.Now.PreviousMonday(); 
DateTime sunday = DateTime.Now.PreviousSunday();

Although it's worth noting that if you ask for the previous Monday on a Monday, it'll give you seven days back. But this is also true if you use BeginningOfWeek, which seems like a bug :(.


public static System.DateTime getstartweek()
{
    System.DateTime dt = System.DateTime.Now;
    System.DayOfWeek dmon = System.DayOfWeek.Monday;
    int span = dt.DayOfWeek - dmon;
    dt = dt.AddDays(-span);
    return dt;
}

Did it for Monday but similar logic for Sunday.

public static DateTime GetStartOfWeekDate()
{
    // Get today's date
    DateTime today = DateTime.Today;
    // Get the value for today. DayOfWeek is an enum with 0 being Sunday, 1 Monday, etc
    var todayDayOfWeek = (int)today.DayOfWeek;

    var dateStartOfWeek = today;
    // If today is not Monday, then get the date for Monday
    if (todayDayOfWeek != 1)
    {
        // How many days to get back to Monday from today
        var daysToStartOfWeek = (todayDayOfWeek - 1);
        // Subtract from today's date the number of days to get to Monday
        dateStartOfWeek = today.AddDays(-daysToStartOfWeek);
    }

    return dateStartOfWeek;

}

Same for end of week (in style of @Compile This's answer):

    public static DateTime EndOfWeek(this DateTime dt)
    {
        int diff = 7 - (int)dt.DayOfWeek;

        diff = diff == 7 ? 0 : diff;

        DateTime eow = dt.AddDays(diff).Date;

        return new DateTime(eow.Year, eow.Month, eow.Day, 23, 59, 59, 999) { };
    }

No one seems to have answered this correctly yet. I'll paste my solution here in case anyone needs it. The following code works regardless if first day of the week is a monday or a sunday or something else.

public static class DateTimeExtension
{
  public static DateTime GetFirstDayOfThisWeek(this DateTime d)
  {
    CultureInfo ci = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
    var first = (int)ci.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek;
    var current = (int)d.DayOfWeek;

    var result = first <= current ?
      d.AddDays(-1 * (current - first)) :
      d.AddDays(first - current - 7);

    return result;
  }
}

class Program
{
  static void Main()
  {
    System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US");
    Console.WriteLine("Current culture set to en-US");
    RunTests();
    Console.WriteLine();
    System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("da-DK");
    Console.WriteLine("Current culture set to da-DK");
    RunTests();
    Console.ReadLine();
  }

  static void RunTests()
  {
    Console.WriteLine("Today {1}: {0}", DateTime.Today.Date.GetFirstDayOfThisWeek(), DateTime.Today.Date.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd"));
    Console.WriteLine("Saturday 2013-03-02: {0}", new DateTime(2013, 3, 2).GetFirstDayOfThisWeek());
    Console.WriteLine("Sunday 2013-03-03: {0}", new DateTime(2013, 3, 3).GetFirstDayOfThisWeek());
    Console.WriteLine("Monday 2013-03-04: {0}", new DateTime(2013, 3, 4).GetFirstDayOfThisWeek());
  }
}

var now = System.DateTime.Now;

var result = now.AddDays(-((now.DayOfWeek - System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek + 7) % 7)).Date;

try with this in c#.With this code you can get both first date and last date of a given week.Here Sunday is the first day and Saturday is the last day but you can set both day's according to your culture

DateTime firstDate = GetFirstDateOfWeek(DateTime.Parse("05/09/2012").Date,DayOfWeek.Sunday);
DateTime lastDate = GetLastDateOfWeek(DateTime.Parse("05/09/2012").Date, DayOfWeek.Saturday);

public static DateTime GetFirstDateOfWeek(DateTime dayInWeek, DayOfWeek firstDay)
{
    DateTime firstDayInWeek = dayInWeek.Date;
    while (firstDayInWeek.DayOfWeek != firstDay)
        firstDayInWeek = firstDayInWeek.AddDays(-1);

    return firstDayInWeek;
}
public static DateTime GetLastDateOfWeek(DateTime dayInWeek, DayOfWeek firstDay)
{
    DateTime lastDayInWeek = dayInWeek.Date;
    while (lastDayInWeek.DayOfWeek != firstDay)
        lastDayInWeek = lastDayInWeek.AddDays(1);

    return lastDayInWeek;
}

Calculating this way lets you choose which day of the week indicates the start of a new week (in the example I chose Monday).

Note that doing this calculation for a day that is a Monday will give the current Monday and not the previous one.

//Replace with whatever input date you want
DateTime inputDate = DateTime.Now;

//For this example, weeks start on Monday
int startOfWeek = (int)DayOfWeek.Monday;

//Calculate the number of days it has been since the start of the week
int daysSinceStartOfWeek = ((int)inputDate.DayOfWeek + 7 - startOfWeek) % 7;

DateTime previousStartOfWeek = inputDate.AddDays(-daysSinceStartOfWeek);

The following method should return the DateTime that you want. Pass in true for Sunday being the first day of the week, false for Monday:

private DateTime getStartOfWeek(bool useSunday)
{
    DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
    int dayOfWeek = (int)now.DayOfWeek;

    if(!useSunday)
        dayOfWeek--;

    if(dayOfWeek < 0)
    {// day of week is Sunday and we want to use Monday as the start of the week
    // Sunday is now the seventh day of the week
        dayOfWeek = 6;
    }

    return now.AddDays(-1 * (double)dayOfWeek);
}

Try to create a function which uses recursion. Your DateTime object is an input and function returns a new DateTime object which stands for the beginning of the week.

    DateTime WeekBeginning(DateTime input)
    {
        do
        {
            if (input.DayOfWeek.ToString() == "Monday")
                return input;
            else
                return WeekBeginning(input.AddDays(-1));
        } while (input.DayOfWeek.ToString() == "Monday");
    }

Tried several but did not solve the issue with a week starting on a Monday, resulting in giving me the coming Monday on a Sunday. So I modified it a bit and got it working with this code:

int delta = DayOfWeek.Monday - DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek;
DateTime monday = DateTime.Now.AddDays(delta == 1 ? -6 : delta);
return monday;

Using Fluent DateTime:

var monday = DateTime.Now.Previous(DayOfWeek.Monday);
var sunday = DateTime.Now.Previous(DayOfWeek.Sunday);

Modulo in C# works bad for -1mod7 (should be 6, c# returns -1) so... "oneliner" solution to this will look like this :)

private static DateTime GetFirstDayOfWeek(DateTime date)
    {
        return date.AddDays(-(((int)date.DayOfWeek - 1) - (int)Math.Floor((double)((int)date.DayOfWeek - 1) / 7) * 7));
    }

   d = DateTime.Now;
            int dayofweek =(int) d.DayOfWeek;
            if (dayofweek != 0)
            {
                d = d.AddDays(1 - dayofweek);
            }
            else { d = d.AddDays(-6); }

Step 1: Create a static class

  public static class TIMEE
{
    public static DateTime StartOfWeek(this DateTime dt, DayOfWeek startOfWeek)
    {
        int diff = (7 + (dt.DayOfWeek - startOfWeek)) % 7;
        return dt.AddDays(-1 * diff).Date;
    }
    public static DateTime EndOfWeek(this DateTime dt, DayOfWeek startOfWeek)
    {
        int diff = (7 - (dt.DayOfWeek - startOfWeek)) % 7;
        return dt.AddDays(1 * diff).Date;
    }
}

Step2: Use this class to get both start and end day of the week

 DateTime dt =TIMEE.StartOfWeek(DateTime.Now ,DayOfWeek.Monday);
        DateTime dt1 = TIMEE.EndOfWeek(DateTime.Now, DayOfWeek.Sunday);

using System;
using System.Globalization;

namespace MySpace
{
    public static class DateTimeExtention
    {
        // ToDo: Need to provide culturaly neutral versions.

        public static DateTime GetStartOfWeek(this DateTime dt)
        {
            DateTime ndt = dt.Subtract(TimeSpan.FromDays((int)dt.DayOfWeek));
            return new DateTime(ndt.Year, ndt.Month, ndt.Day, 0, 0, 0, 0);
        }

        public static DateTime GetEndOfWeek(this DateTime dt)
        {
            DateTime ndt = dt.GetStartOfWeek().AddDays(6);
            return new DateTime(ndt.Year, ndt.Month, ndt.Day, 23, 59, 59, 999);
        }

        public static DateTime GetStartOfWeek(this DateTime dt, int year, int week)
        {
            DateTime dayInWeek = new DateTime(year, 1, 1).AddDays((week - 1) * 7);
            return dayInWeek.GetStartOfWeek();
        }

        public static DateTime GetEndOfWeek(this DateTime dt, int year, int week)
        {
            DateTime dayInWeek = new DateTime(year, 1, 1).AddDays((week - 1) * 7);
            return dayInWeek.GetEndOfWeek();
        }
    }
}

This may be a bit of a hack, but you can cast the .DayOfWeek property to an int (it's an enum and since its not had its underlying data type changed it defaults to int) and use that to determine the previous start of the week.

It appears the week specified in the DayOfWeek enum starts on Sunday, so if we subtract 1 from this value that'll be equal to how many days the Monday is before the current date. We also need to map the Sunday (0) to equal 7 so given 1 - 7 = -6 the Sunday will map to the previous Monday:-

DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
int dayOfWeek = (int)now.DayOfWeek;
dayOfWeek = dayOfWeek == 0 ? 7 : dayOfWeek;
DateTime startOfWeek = now.AddDays(1 - (int)now.DayOfWeek);

The code for the previous Sunday is simpler as we don't have to make this adjustment:-

DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
int dayOfWeek = (int)now.DayOfWeek;
DateTime startOfWeek = now.AddDays(-(int)now.DayOfWeek);

A little more verbose and culture-aware:

System.Globalization.CultureInfo ci = 
    System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
DayOfWeek fdow = ci.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek;
DayOfWeek today = DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek;
DateTime sow = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-(today - fdow)).Date;

Following on from Compile This' Answer, use the following method to obtain the date for any day of the week:

public static DateTime GetDayOfWeek(DateTime dateTime, DayOfWeek dayOfWeek)
{
   var monday = dateTime.Date.AddDays((7 + (dateTime.DayOfWeek - DayOfWeek.Monday) % 7) * -1);

   var diff = dayOfWeek - DayOfWeek.Monday;

   if (diff == -1)
   {
      diff = 6;
   }

   return monday.AddDays(diff);
} 

Putting it all together, with Globalization and allowing for specifying the first day of the week as part of the call we have

public static DateTime StartOfWeek ( this DateTime dt, DayOfWeek? firstDayOfWeek )
{
    DayOfWeek fdow;

    if ( firstDayOfWeek.HasValue  )
    {
        fdow = firstDayOfWeek.Value;
    }
    else
    {
        System.Globalization.CultureInfo ci = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
        fdow = ci.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek;
    }

    int diff = dt.DayOfWeek - fdow;

    if ( diff < 0 )
    {
        diff += 7;
    }

    return dt.AddDays( -1 * diff ).Date;

}

This will return both the beginning of the week and the end of the week dates:

    private string[] GetWeekRange(DateTime dateToCheck)
    {
        string[] result = new string[2];
        TimeSpan duration = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0); //One day 
        DateTime dateRangeBegin = dateToCheck;
        DateTime dateRangeEnd = DateTime.Today.Add(duration);

        dateRangeBegin = dateToCheck.AddDays(-(int)dateToCheck.DayOfWeek);
        dateRangeEnd = dateToCheck.AddDays(6 - (int)dateToCheck.DayOfWeek);

        result[0] = dateRangeBegin.Date.ToString();
        result[1] = dateRangeEnd.Date.ToString();
        return result;

    }

I have posted the complete code for calculating the begin/end of week, month, quarter and year on my blog ZamirsBlog


For Monday

DateTime startAtMonday = DateTime.Now.AddDays(DayOfWeek.Monday - DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek);

For Sunday

DateTime startAtSunday = DateTime.Now.AddDays(DayOfWeek.Sunday- DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek);

Ugly but it at least gives the right dates back

With start of week set by system:

    public static DateTime FirstDateInWeek(this DateTime dt)
    {
        while (dt.DayOfWeek != System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek)
            dt = dt.AddDays(-1);
        return dt;
    }

Without:

    public static DateTime FirstDateInWeek(this DateTime dt, DayOfWeek weekStartDay)
    {
        while (dt.DayOfWeek != weekStartDay)
            dt = dt.AddDays(-1);
        return dt;
    }

This would give you midnight on the first Sunday of the week:

DateTime t = DateTime.Now;
t -= new TimeSpan ((int) t.DayOfWeek, t.Hour, t.Minute, t.Second);

This gives you the first Monday at midnight:

DateTime t = DateTime.Now;
t -= new TimeSpan ((int) t.DayOfWeek - 1, t.Hour, t.Minute, t.Second);