Learn about possible future .NET equivalent to LocalDateTime

[justingrant]

@pipobscure mentioned today that some folks at Microsoft may be working on a LocalDateTime-like type for .NET.

Given that we're both working on similar use cases in similar timeframes, it may make sense to align with them, especially on string and JSON interop formats.

Another possible area for cooperation could be future standardization of our time zone and calendar extensions to the ISO string format.

@pipobscure, @rbuckton - do you know who's working on this at Microsoft?

[pipobscure]

No. I took this from a side comment that was made by maggie/matt/brian over a year ago. They were badgering their internal contacts to adopt this. So how real that actually is is entirely unknown!

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On 1 Sep 2020, at 23:16, Justin Grant ***@***.***> wrote:  @pipobscure mentioned today that some folks at Microsoft may be working on a LocalDateTime-like type for .NET. Given that we're both working on similar use cases in similar timeframes, it may make sense to align with them, especially on string and JSON interop formats. Another possible area for cooperation could be future standardization of our time zone and calendar extensions to the ISO string format. @pipobscure, @rbuckton - do you know who's working on this at Microsoft? — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.

[rbuckton]

I can ask around, but I'm currently unaware of any plans as such. As far as I'm aware, .NET already has the following (and has had for a number of years):

• DateTime - A representation of the date and time in the local time zone
• TimeSpan - A fixed duration, can also represent the time of day.
• TimeZone/TimeZoneInfo - Represents time zone information from the system and the creation of custom time zones.
• DateTimeOffset - A date and time fixed to a specific offset from UTC.
• Calendar - A representation of various calendar systems, used in conjunction with DateTime and DateTimeOffset.

[ptomato]

@mj1856 Do you have any information on this?

[mattjohnsonpint]

AFAIK, nothing is currently planned in .NET itself. I've had some discussions with @tarekgh (the lead on the .NET team in this area) but not much is happening with the date/time API in .NET.

Noda Time has a ZonedDateTime, but that's a library not a built-in.

Separately, I did a prototype for Date and Time types, which are still here, but no plan to move forward with them yet.

[ptomato]

From the sound of it, there are no plans currently underway, so closing this.

[mattjohnsonpint]

Actually there is work going on in this area, being tracked here:

dotnet/runtime#45318

[ptomato]

It seems discussion has moved to dotnet/runtime#36617

This is a tracking issue. We should see if they are interested in the IETF draft for extending RFC 3339.

[ptomato]

I added this to js-temporal/temporal-developer-education#2, the cross-language comparison issue in the developer-education task list.