What are the methods for obtaining a timestamp in C#?

1 year ago
Olivia Parker
1 minute

In C#, there are several ways to obtain a timestamp.

  1. Get the Ticks of the current time by using DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks, which represents the number of 100-nanosecond intervals that have elapsed since midnight (00:00:00) on January 1, 0001 AD. To convert it to a timestamp in seconds, simply divide by TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond.
long timestamp = DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks / TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond;
Console.WriteLine(timestamp);
  1. Obtain the seconds-level Unix timestamp of the current time using DateTimeOffset.UtcNow.ToUnixTimeSeconds(). DateTimeOffset structure allows for the representation of dates and times, including time zone information.
long timestamp = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow.ToUnixTimeSeconds();
Console.WriteLine(timestamp);
  1. Calculate the seconds-based Unix timestamp by finding the time difference between the current time and the Unix epoch (midnight of January 1, 1970).
long timestamp = (long)(DateTime.UtcNow - new DateTime(1970, 1, 1)).TotalSeconds;
Console.WriteLine(timestamp);

These are several commonly used methods to obtain a timestamp, you can choose the one that best suits your needs.

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