In some cultures, calendars mark down seasons of agriculture, migration and religious practices. The sun and the moon are the two main astronomical objects, over which a calendar may be based; and thus the most famous two types of calendars: the solar and the lunar calendars. Other calendars are marked by certain events. An example of a solar calendar is the Georgian calendar which is used in most of the English-speaking countries, while an example of a lunar calendar would be the Islamic Hijri calendar. Some of the calendars that are marked by certain events are: the Hijri Calendar which is marked by the Migration (Hijra) of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina, and the Japanese calendar which is marked by the current emperor's reign. Calendars would generally differ in their year value, the length of the year and months, as well as the way of handling leap years. They also differ in their date format, the names of months, and the starting day of the week. Therefore Calendars have come to mean not only a consequent of differing cultures but a signifying characteristic of the culture and its social practices. With Microsoft emphasis on internationalization, it was imperative to equip our applications with global culture support, and hence international calendar support. In this paper, we will focus on the Hijri calendar support in several Microsoft products, mainly Windows SQL Server 2000 and Visual Studio .NET.

Overview of the Hijri Calendar

The Hijri calendar is based on the motion of the moon around the earth, and therefore lunar, while the Georgian calendar is based on the motion of the earth around the sun, and therefore solar. The Hijri calendar’s reference point is the Hijra (migration) of the prophet form Mecca to Medina. The start date of the calendar was chosen to be the first day of the first Arabic months (Muharram) of the year of the Hijra. The Hijri calendar is composed of 12 months, however, the Hijri year is shorter than the solar (Gregorian) year with around 11 days. Therefore the Islamic occasions do not always start in the same seasons, on every solar year.

The Hijri calendar is the official calendar in many Islamic countries in the Gulf region and especially Saudi Arabia. Other Arab countries use the Hijri calendar along side the Georgian calendar. Therefore the support of the Hijri calendar was imperative to the usefulness of Microsoft products in these cultures.

Windows XP and Hijri Calendar Support

Windows has a lot of interesting international features that support the Hijri calendar. Through its national language support (NLS), Windows supports many types of calendars, date, number and currency formats. We will start by introducing the NLS in Windows, and how you can query the user and system locales through its several APIs: the NLS APIs. But to understand the many features of NLS, it is important to understand first the meaning of locale, and the difference between the system, user and thread locales.

Windows National Language Support (NLS)

NLS consists of a set of system tables that applications can access through the NLS APIs. These system tables contain the following information:

Locale information: Such as date, time, number, or currency format or localized names of countries, languages, or days of the month and week.

Character mapping tables: That map local character encodings (ANSI or OEM) to Unicode or vice versa.

They also contain information about keyboard layout, character entry, sorting and fonts.

On Windows XP, users can install National Language Support for any locale via the control panel.

Locale

A locale is a collection of language-related, user-preference information represented as a list of values. Each system has at least one installed locale and often has many locales from which the user may choose.

System Locale

The system locale determines which code page (ANSI, DOS, Macintosh) is used on the system by default. The system locale setting affects only ANSI applications, that is, applications that are not fully Unicode-compliant. This is because setting the system locale to a certain language instructs Windows to emulate a non-Unicode-based operating system (for example, Windows 95/98/Me) localized to this language. Changing the system locale installs the necessary bitmap font files to support non-Unicode applications in the specified language. To select a system locale, the appropriate language group must be installed; that is, you need the script support to select a system locale. The system locale is a per-system setting and requires a restart to be implemented.

User Locale

The user locale is a per user variable that determines default sort order and the default settings for formatting dates, times, currency, and numbers. Although it is presented as a language (some in combination with a country/region), it is not a language setting. For example, setting the user locale to French means that the user wants to use the formatting conventions of French, not necessarily the French language.

In addition, the user locale determines the string that is used for the names of the days and months. For example, if a user displays 'September 15, 2003,' the 'September' string could change based on the user locale to “Septembre”. Changing the user locale automatically adds an input locale with the default settings for the language.

Thread Locale

The thread locale is a per thread data that determines the formatting of dates, times, currency, and large numbers for the thread. It can be used to retrieve language specific resource from a multilingual resource file. It defaults to the value for the currently selected user locale. To retrieve and set the thread locale, call GetThreadLocale and SetThreadLocale.

To be able to use the Hijri Calendar as the default calendar type, there are two methods:

1- Changing the System Locale

From the Control Panel, "Regional and Language Options" go to the "Advanced" tab and change the "Language for non Unicode programs" to an Arabic language.

PS. This will not affect the user interface language

It is a per-system setting that applies to all users on the same system. This setting will require a reboot to take effect.

2- Changing the User Locale

From the Control Panel, “Regional and Language Options”, from “Standards and Formats”, choose any Arabic language, then if you click “Customize”, and choose “Date”, you can customize the format with which you want to display dates, as well as the calendar type, in this case you can choose the Hijri calendar for thecalendar type.

It is a per-user setting; therefore it applies only to the current user of the system. For example, if your system locale is English(US), you can still display the dates in Spanish or French formats.

NLS APIs

You could query and modify some attributes in the locale using the following APIs:

GetDateFormat

The GetDateFormat function formats a date as a date string for a specified locale. This function formats either a specified date or the local system date.

int GetDateFormat(LCID Locale, DWORD dwFlags, CONST SYSTEMTIME *lpDate,

LPCTSTR lpFormat, LPTSTR lpDateStr,int cchDate);

Locale

Value

Meaning

LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT

Default system locale.

LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT

Default user locale.

The following code sample displays the system date using the default system locale, and the format “dddd,dd MMM yyyy".

const MAX_STR = 30;

char strDate[MAX_STR];

GetDateFormat(LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT,0,0,"dddd,dd MMM yyyy", strDate,MAX_STR);

MessageBox(NULL,strDate,TEXT("Win Hijri Date"),MB_OK);

And the output is:

If you try the same sample, and replace the LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT with LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, you would get the same result (Provided that you have previously set both the user and system locales to Arabic-sa from the control panel’s regional settings).

Note: If you got the Gregorian date with Arabic names, then you probably forgot to set the calendar type to the Hijri calendar.

Using the parameter lpFormat of the GetDateFormat, you can represent the date in any format the current locale supports; this would override the date format setting in the control panel. For example, by setting the format to 0, the default will be the locale’s short date format:

GetDateFormat(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT,0,0,0,strDate,MAX_STR);

And the output would be:

You can also retrieve the standard date formats supported by a given locale, by using the EnumDateFormats API.

EnumDateFormats

The EnumDateFormats function enumerates the long or short date formats that are available for a specified locale. The value of the dwFlags parameter determines whether the long or short date formats are enumerated. The function enumerates the date formats by passing date format string pointers, one at a time, to the specified application-defined callback function. This continues until the last date format is found or the callback function returns FALSE.

BOOL EnumDateFormats(DATEFMT_ENUMPROC
lpDateFmtEnumProc, LCID Locale, DWORD dwFlags);

This code sample would display all the available standard date formats for the Hijri calendar (which is the current system calendar):

#include “string.h”

#include "windows.h"

#include "Winnls.h"

const MAX_STR = 300;

char dateFormats[MAX_STR];

// The callback function

BOOL CALLBACK EnumDateFormatsProc(LPTSTR lpDateFormatString)

{

const MAX_STR = 30;

char strDate[MAX_STR];

if (!lpDateFormatString)

return FALSE;

GetDateFormat(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, 0,0,lpDateFormatString,strDate,MAX_STR);

strcat(dateFormats, strDate);

strcat(dateFormats,"\n");

return TRUE;

}

int APIENTRY WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,

HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,

LPSTR lpCmdLine,

int nCmdShow)

{

// Initialize the character array that will hold the Date Formats to Null.

memset(dateFormats, 0, sizeof(dateFormats));

// Enumerate the native calendar names for all available calendar

// types that correspond to the current user locale.

EnumDateFormats(EnumDateFormatsProc,

LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT,

DATE_LONGDATE);

MessageBox( NULL,dateFormats, TEXT("Hijri Date Formats"), MB_OK|MB_RTLREADING|MB_RIGHT);

return 0;

}

And the output is:

EnumCalendarInfo

The EnumCalendarInfo function enumerates calendar information for a specified locale. The CalType parameter specifies the type of calendar information to enumerate. The function returns the specified calendar information for all applicable calendars for the locale or, for a single requested calendar, depending on the value of the Calendar parameter.

BOOL EnumCalendarInfo( CALINFO_ENUMPROC pCalInfoEnumProc, LCID Locale
, CALID Calendar, CALTYPE CalType);

You could display all the calendar types available for a certain locale, using the following code sample:

const MAX_STR = 300;

char calendars[MAX_STR];

BOOL CALLBACK EnumCalendarInfoProc(LPTSTR lpCalendarInfoString)

{

if (!lpCalendarInfoString)

return FALSE;

strcat(calendars, lpCalendarInfoString);

strcat(calendars,"\n");

return TRUE;

}

int APIENTRY _tWinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,

HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,

LPTSTR lpCmdLine,

int nCmdShow)

{

// Initialize the character array that will hold the calendar names to Null.

memset(calendars, 0, sizeof(calendars));

// Enumerate the native calendar names for all available calendar

// types that correspond to the current user locale.

EnumCalendarInfo(EnumCalendarInfoProc, // enumeration callback

// function

LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, // locale - any valid LCID

ENUM_ALL_CALENDARS, // does enumeration for all supported

// calendars

CAL_SCALNAME); // calendar info (return the calendar name)

MessageBox(NULL,calendars, TEXT("Calendars names"), MB_OK|MB_RTLREADING|MB_RIGHT);

}

And you get the following output that lists all available calendars for the current user locale (Arabic-SA):

GetCalendarInfo

The GetCalendarInfo function retrieves information about a calendar. This function is very similar to the EnumCalendarInfo described above.

int GetCalendarInfo(LCID
Locale, CALID Calendar, CALTYPE CalType,
LPTSTR lpCalData, int cchData,LPDWORD lpValue);

You can specify the kind of information you want to be retrieved from the Calendar, by setting the CalType to any of the Calendar Type Information. In the following code sample, you could retrieve the name of the first month of the Hijri year, by specifying CAL_SMONTHNAME1 field in the Calendar type Info

GetCalendarInfo(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT,CAL_HIJRI, CAL_SMONTHNAME1,strCalInfo,128,0);

MessageBox( NULL,strCalInfo, TEXT("Calendar Info"), MB_OK|MB_RTLREADING|MB_RIGHT);

And the output is:

Per-Thread Settings

Now, what if you are developing an application, in which you will be utilizing the Hijri calendar and at the same time, you do not wish to change the user settings, or require the users of your application to have to change their user settings for this application to run correctly. This is where the SetThreadLocale() function comes in handy.

SetThreadLocale

The SetThreadLocale function sets the calling thread's current locale.

BOOL SetThreadLocale (LCID Locale);

The Locale parameter can be the LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT or the LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, however this parameter can be a locale identifier created by the MAKELCID macro. This macro can be useful in the previously mentioned case where you would like to create your own locale.

MAKELCID

The MAKELCID macro creates a locale identifier from a language identifier.

DWORD MAKELCID (WORD wLanguageID,WORD wSortID);

The following code creates a locale identifier for the Arabic Language identifier with a Sub language of Saudi Arabia (as mentioned earlier, this is not a language setting, it just means you are going to use the formatting conventions of the Arabic Language). Then you set the current thread locale to this new locale. In this case you can have your user locale set to English (United States), in the Regional Options), and at the same time display calendars supported by the Arabic (Saudi Arabia) locale.

LCID lcid;

lcid = MAKELCID(MAKELANGID(LANG_ARABIC, SUBLANG_ARABIC_SAUDI_ARABIA), SORT_DEFAULT );

SetThreadLocale(lcid);

EnumCalendarInfo(EnumCalendarInfoProc,lcid,ENUM_ALL_CALENDARS, CAL_SCALNAME);

MessageBox( NULL,DateFormats, TEXT("Calendar Info"), MB_OK|MB_RTLREADING|MB_RIGHT);

And you can get the same output, you got when you had your user locale set to Arabic (Saudi Arabia).

Adjusting the Hijri Calendar

The start of a Hijri month is marked by the sight of the lunar crescent by a human observer. The sight of the crescent is regulated by many factors, including the location of sighting. Therefore it is very difficult to predict in advance the beginnings and endings of the Hijri months. An adjustment of between zero and two days can be made to the calendar through the registry entry AddHijriDate.

AddHijriDate

HKCU\Control Panel\International

Data type	Range	Default value
REG_SZ	A valid adjustment value.	(None)

This entry does not exist in the registry by default. You can add it using two methods:

1- From Control Panel:

From Control Panel, click on “Regional and Language Options”. In the “Standards and Formats” box, select a locale that uses the Hijri calendar. Click on the “Customize”, and then go to the “Date” tab. In the “Adjust Hijri date to:” drop-down list, select the appropriate value (one or two days before or after the current selected date). Click OK, then click OK again.

2- From the Registry:

You can adjust the Hijri Calendar from your registry, by modifying the AddHijriDate key value at

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International\ and setting it to one of the following values:

Value	Meaning
AddHijriDate-2	Subtract two days.
AddHijriDate	Subtract one day.
(blank)	No adjustment is necessary. (If the date has not been adjusted, this entry does not appear in the registry. If the date has been adjusted and then restored to its original value, this entry appears in the registry with no value.)
AddHijriDate+1	Add one day.
AddHijriDate+2	Add two days.

Here is an example of decrementing the current Hijri Date by two:

From the task bar go the Start menu \ Run and type regedit. Navigate down until you find the International keys. Select AddHijriDate, right click and select Modify, and in the Value data, write AddHijriDate – (the adjustment value), In this example, you can set it to AddHijriDate – 2

Now, when you check your system Hijri Date, you will find it has been decremented by two.

MonthCalendar and DateTimePicker Windows Control

The Windows MonthCalendar control presents an intuitive graphical interface for users to view and set date information. The control displays a grid containing the numbered days of the month, arranged in columns underneath the days of the week. You can select a different month by clicking the arrow buttons on either side of the month caption. Unlike the similar DateTimePicker control, you can select a range of dates with this control; however, the DateTimePicker control allows you to set times as well as dates. Unfortunately MonthCalendar and hence the DateTimePicker do not currently support Hijri Dates, so even if you set your calendar type to Hijri calendar in the Regional options, you will still get the default Gregorian calendar. However, MonthCalendar does support other Arabic calendars like the Arabic Gregorian calendar.

SQL Server 2000 and Hijri Calendar Support

The SQL Server 2000 stores the dates internally as two integers (4-byte integers for datetime, and 2-byte integers for smalldatetime) that represent the date and time in question:

Datetime, stores the date and time data in the Gregorian calendar from January 1, 1753 through December 31, 9999, to an accuracy of one three-hundredth of a second (equivalent to 3.33 milliseconds or 0.00333 seconds).

Smalldatetime, stores the date and time data in the Gregorian calendar from January 1, 1900, through June 6, 2079, with accuracy to the minute. smalldatetime values with 29.998 seconds or lower are rounded down to the nearest minute; values with 29.999 seconds or higher are rounded up to the nearest minute.

Microsoft SQL Server rejects data that falls outside of these ranges. Irrespective of what date format you give the SQL server, it will store the datetime in its own internal format as a number, and therefore with no specific international meaning. What determines how the Datetime value should be displayed and in an international format, is the client tool. The client tool receives the datetime value from the SQL Server and then converts it to a string value in the desired format. However, SQL Server 2000 supports many different locale-specific conversions that can be performed at the server instead of relying on custom solutions from developers.

DateTime Conversion

SQL provides the CONVERT function which takes a data type, and an expression. It can be used to convert the datetime number or value to a string format. In this case the string format will be SQL’s default format. But what if you want to display the date in a different format than the default? The CONVERT function has an optional third parameter called style to determine the date format. Some of the available styles can be found in the following table:

W/century	W/o century	Standard	Input (converting to datetime) Output (converting to text)
0 or 100	-	Default	mon dd yyyy hh:miAM (or PM)
101	1	USA	mm/dd/yy
102	2	ANSI	yy.mm.dd
103	3	British/French	dd/mm/yy
104	4	German	dd.mm.yy
105	5	Italian	dd-mm-yy
106	6	-	dd mon yy
107	7	-	Mon dd, yy
108	8	-	hh:mm:ss
9 or 109	-	Default + milliseconds	mon dd yyyy hh:mi:ss:mmmAM (or PM)
110	10	USA	mm-dd-yy
111	11	JAPAN	yy/mm/dd
112	12	ISO	yymmdd
13 or 113	-	Europe default + milliseconds	dd mon yyyy hh:mm:ss:mmm(24h)
114	14	-	hh:mi:ss:mmm(24h)
20 or 120	-	ODBC canonical	yyyy-mm-dd hh:mi:ss(24h)
21 or 121	-	ODBC canonical + milliseconds	yyyy-mm-dd hh:mi:ss.mmm(24h)
126	-	ISO8601 (no spaces)	yyyy-mm-dd Thh:mm:ss:mmm
130	-	Kuwaiti (Hijri)	dd mon yyyy hh:mi:ss:mmmAM
131	-	Kuwaiti (Hijri)	dd/mm/yy hh:mi:ss:mmmAM

As can be seen from the above table, SQL server supports conversion to Hijri date format using the Kuwaiti algorithm. The two styles available in SQL Server 2000 to support Hijri dates are:

· 130—Returns the date using the Hijri calendar, in dd mon yyyy hh:mi:ss:mmmAM format.

· 131—Returns the date using the Hijri calendar, in dd/mm/yy hh:mi:ss:mmmAM format.

For example, to convert a Gregorian date to Hijri format with Transact-SQL, you would use syntax such as the following:

SELECT CONVERT(nchar, GETDATE(), 131)

This query will return a string such as the following in its result set:

5/07/1424 11:25:11:030AM

The reverse operation is also possible. The following syntax would be used to convert a Hijri date to Gregorian format:

SELECT CONVERT(datetime, '5/07/1424 11:25:11:030AM', 131)

This query would convert the date to SQL Server datetime type, which appears in the SQL Query Analyzer as follows:

2003-09-01 11:25:11.030

The second method is to do the conversions on the client side once a date value has been returned.

Date Functions

Date functions such as DateDiff can also be used with Hijri Dates.

DATEDIFF ( datepart , startdate , enddate ) takes two datetime values and returns the difference in the specified datePart(the part of the date you want to calculate the difference in, day , month or year). For the DateDiff function to understand the Hijri dates, it has be converted to its datetime equivalent value first. For example:

Select datediff(dd,convert (datetime,'4/07/1424 11:25:11:030 AM',131), convert (datetime,'5/07/1424 11:25:11:030 AM',131))

Returns:

DATEADD (datepart , number, date ) returns a new datetime value based on adding an interval to the specified date. It also takes a datetime value; therefore you have to convert the Hijri Date format back to a date time value as follows:

DateAdd(d,21,convert (datetime,'4/07/1424 11:25:11:030 AM',131)

Returns:

2003-09-21 11:25:11.030

To convert back to Hijri, you convert the output of DateAdd with style 130, as follows:

Convert (nchar, DateADD(d,21,convert (datetime,'4/07/1424 11:25:11:030 AM',131)),130)

And it returns:

‏ 25 رجب 1424 11:25:11:030AM

As you can see from the above output, the logical ordering is not correct. The problem can be considered a general limitation of the 130 styles in the CONVERT function, although you can work around it easily enough by adding the proper Unicode control character in front of the string, as follows:

select nchar(8207)+ convert(nchar,DateADD(d,21,convert (datetime,'4/07/1424 11:25:11:030 AM',131)),130)

DATEPART (datepart , date) returns the part of the date requested by datepart. However, datepart would return the part of the Gregorian date equivalent to the Hijri date. For example:

Select datepart(d, convert (datetime,'4/07/1424 11:25:11:030 AM',131))

And it returns:

Which is day 31 of the date 31/8/2003 in the Gregorian, equivalent to 4/7/1424 in Hijri.

Note that SQL Server does not use the regional calendar settings included with Windows, and any adjustment made in the regional setting for the Hijri date does not affect the conversion method in SQL Server.

Visual Studio .NET and Hijri Calendar Support

Using Calendars with Arabic Cultures

The .NET Framework provides the Calendar Class as well as the following Calendar implementations: GregorianCalendar and HijriCalendar and other calendars. The CultureInfo Class has a CultureInfo.Calendar property that retrieves a culture's default calendar. Some cultures support more than one calendar. The CultureInfo.OptionalCalendars property retrieves the optional calendars supported by a culture. For example, the Saudi Arabia culture has six calendars, Hijri calendar (as default) plus five of different Gregorian calendar types, as specified in the Regional Settings of the Control Panel.

The GregorianCalendar has different language versions of the Gregorian calendar. Using the GregorianCalendar.CalendarType Property you can get or set the GregorianCalendarTypes value that denotes the version of the current GregorianCalendar. The date and time patterns associated with the GregorianCalendar vary depending on the language. For Arabic cultures, more language versions of the Gregorian calendar are available. For example, you can use the French version of GregorianCalendar using the MiddleEastFrench value. For more information see "GregorianCalendarTypes Enumeration" in MSDN

Each CultureInfo supports a set of calendars. The Calendar property returns the default calendar for the culture, and the OptionalCalendars property returns an array containing all the calendars supported by the culture. To change the calendar used by a CultureInfo, set the Calendar property of CultureInfo.DateTimeFormat to a new Calendar.

The following example lists the calendar types of the Saudi Arabia culture:

[C#]
using System.Globalization;
CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo("ar-SA");
foreach (Calendar cal in ci.OptionalCalendars)
{
if(cal is GregorianCalendar)
{
GregorianCalendar gc = (GregorianCalendar)cal;
Console.WriteLine(gc.CalendarType.ToString());
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine(cal.ToString());
}
}

The output is:
System.Globalization.HijriCalendar
USEnglish
MiddleEastFrench
Arabic
Localized
TransliteratedFrench

Using the Hijri Calendar

This implementation of the HijriCalendar class adjusts the calendar date by adding or subtracting a value from zero to two days to accommodate the date difference between countries/regions. That value is stored in the HijriAdjustment property. If HijriAdjustment is not set explicitly, it derives its value from the settings in Regional and Language Options (or Regional Options or Regional Settings) in Control Panel and is stored in the registry value AddHijriDate. However, that information can change during the life of the AppDomain. The HijriCalendar class does not detect changes in the system settings automatically.

You can set the culture’s calendar to one of its supported calendar types. For example, the Arabic cultures support the Hijri calendar, so, you can set the Arabic culture calendar to Hijri calendar. The CultureInfo.Calendar is a read-only property which gets the current calendar, but cannot be changed. Instead, you can specify the calendar of the DateTimeFormat.Calendar of the CultureInfo, as in the following code:

// Create a CultureInfo object for Saudi Arabia.
CultureInfo sa = new CultureInfo("ar-SA");
sa.DateTimeFormat.Calendar = new HijriCalendar();

You can perform any operation with Hijri dates in the same way,
such as displaying Hijri and converting Hijri calendar to/from Gregorian or
other calendars.

Calendar Controls

MonthCalendar and DateTimePicker Windows Controls

In Visual Studio .NET, you can reference many of the existing windows controls including the previously mentioned MonthCalendar and the DateTimePicker, to display the system calendar.

Calendar Web Control

The Calendar control displays a traditional one-month calendar on your Web Forms pages. Users can use the calendar to view and select dates. The web calendar control uses the default user locale specified from the Regional options in the control panel.

To place a calendar control inside your web application, open the tool box’ web forms’ controls, scroll down until you find the Calendar control, click on it and drop it on the web page. To have it display the Hijri Calendar in the web form, you also need to set the web page’s Culture property to any Arabic language and the same for the Web page’s uiCulture, after setting the user locale in the control panel:

For proper RTL display, scroll down the properties to the
dir property and choose rtl.

When you run you get a web page, with your Hijri Calendar:

Date Conversion

Converting from Gregorian to Hijri date

Using Datetime.ToString(ByVal format As String ,
ByVal provider As IFormatProvider):

Converts the value of this Datetime instance to its
equivalent string representation using the specified format and culture-specific format information.

The following Windows application example converts a date from Gregorian to Hijri and displays it:

[C#]

DateTime dt;
System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo HijriDTFI;
try
{
dt = Convert.ToDateTime("1/09/2003");

HijriDTFI = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("ar-EG",false).DateTimeFormat;

HijriDTFI.Calendar = new System.Globalization.HijriCalendar();

HijriDTFI.ShortDatePattern = "dd/MM/yyyy";

MessageBox.Show(dt.Date.ToString("f", HijriDTFI),”Hijri Date”, MessageBoxButtons.OK,

MessageBoxIcon.Information,

MessageBoxDefaultButton.Button1,

MessageBoxOptions.RtlReading |

MessageBoxOptions.RightAlign);
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
}

The output is:

Converting from Hijri to Gregorian

1- Using Datetime.ToString:

The following example converts date from Hijri to Gregorian:

[C#]

DateTime dt = new DateTime(1422, 1,1, new HijriCalendar());
Console.WriteLine(dt.Date.ToString());

The output is:

1/9/2003 or 1/9/2003 (according to your current culture settings)

2- Using System.DateTime.Parse
Converts the given date string in whichever format or culture and converts it to its equivalent Datetime value or number.

[VB]

Dim ResultFrm As New Result()

Dim MyDate As DateTime

Dim CtHijri As New CultureInfo("ar-EG")

CtHijri.DateTimeFormat.Calendar = New System.Globalization.HijriCalendar()

Try

MyDate = System.DateTime.Parse(“5/07/1424 “, CtHijri,

System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.AllowWhiteSpaces)

ResultFrm.TextResult.Text = MyDate.ToString()

Catch

ResultFrm.TextResult.Text = "ERROR"

End Try

ResultFrm.Show()

The output is:

1/9/2003

Conclusion

In this paper, we have tried to give you an overview of Microsoft’s support to Hijri Calendars in Windows XP, SQL Server 2000, and Visual Studio .NET. By the time you read this paper, there would probably be more and more international features and Arabic support incorporated in those and many others of Microsoft Products.

For More Information