Datetime - Get next tuesday

How can I get the date of next Tuesday?

In PHP, it's as simple as strtotime('next tuesday');.

How can I achieve something similar in .NET

Solution 1:

As I've mentioned in the comments, there are various things you could mean by "next Tuesday", but this code gives you "the next Tuesday to occur, or today if it's already Tuesday":

DateTime today = DateTime.Today;
// The (... + 7) % 7 ensures we end up with a value in the range [0, 6]
int daysUntilTuesday = ((int) DayOfWeek.Tuesday - (int) today.DayOfWeek + 7) % 7;
DateTime nextTuesday = today.AddDays(daysUntilTuesday);

If you want to give "a week's time" if it's already Tuesday, you can use:

// This finds the next Monday (or today if it's Monday) and then adds a day... so the
// result is in the range [1-7]
int daysUntilTuesday = (((int) DayOfWeek.Monday - (int) today.DayOfWeek + 7) % 7) + 1;

... or you could use the original formula, but from tomorrow:

DateTime tomorrow = DateTime.Today.AddDays(1);
// The (... + 7) % 7 ensures we end up with a value in the range [0, 6]
int daysUntilTuesday = ((int) DayOfWeek.Tuesday - (int) tomorrow.DayOfWeek + 7) % 7;
DateTime nextTuesday = tomorrow.AddDays(daysUntilTuesday);

EDIT: Just to make this nice and versatile:

public static DateTime GetNextWeekday(DateTime start, DayOfWeek day)
{
    // The (... + 7) % 7 ensures we end up with a value in the range [0, 6]
    int daysToAdd = ((int) day - (int) start.DayOfWeek + 7) % 7;
    return start.AddDays(daysToAdd);
}

So to get the value for "today or in the next 6 days":

DateTime nextTuesday = GetNextWeekday(DateTime.Today, DayOfWeek.Tuesday);

To get the value for "the next Tuesday excluding today":

DateTime nextTuesday = GetNextWeekday(DateTime.Today.AddDays(1), DayOfWeek.Tuesday);

Solution 2:

This should do the trick:

static DateTime GetNextWeekday(DayOfWeek day)
{
    DateTime result = DateTime.Now.AddDays(1);
    while( result.DayOfWeek != day )
        result = result.AddDays(1);
    return result;
}

Solution 3:

There are less verbose and more clever/elegant solutions to this problem, but the following C# function works really well for a number of situations.

/// <summary>
/// Find the closest weekday to the given date
/// </summary>
/// <param name="includeStartDate">if the supplied date is on the specified day of the week, return that date or continue to the next date</param>
/// <param name="searchForward">search forward or backward from the supplied date. if a null parameter is given, the closest weekday (ie in either direction) is returned</param>
public static DateTime ClosestWeekDay(this DateTime date, DayOfWeek weekday, bool includeStartDate = true, bool? searchForward=true)
{
    if (!searchForward.HasValue && !includeStartDate) 
    {
        throw new ArgumentException("if searching in both directions, start date must be a valid result");
    }
    var day = date.DayOfWeek;
    int add = ((int)weekday - (int)day);
    if (searchForward.HasValue)
    {
        if (add < 0 && searchForward.Value)
        {
            add += 7;
        }
        else if (add > 0 && !searchForward.Value)
        {
            add -= 7;
        }
        else if (add == 0 && !includeStartDate)
        {
            add = searchForward.Value ? 7 : -7;
        }
    }
    else if (add < -3) 
    {
        add += 7; 
    }
    else if (add > 3)
    {
        add -= 7;
    }
    return date.AddDays(add);
}