Difference in months between two dates

Question

How to calculate the difference in months between two dates in C#?

Is there is equivalent of VB's DateDiff() method in C#. I need to find difference in months between two dates that are years apart. The documentation says that I can use TimeSpan like:

TimeSpan ts = date1 - date2;

but this gives me data in Days. I don't want to divide this number by 30 because not every month is 30 days and since the two operand values are quite apart from each other, I am afraid dividing by 30 might give me a wrong value.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Here is my contribution to get difference in Months that I've found to be accurate:

namespace System
{
     public static class DateTimeExtensions
     {
         public static Int32 DiffMonths( this DateTime start, DateTime end )
         {
             Int32 months = 0;
             DateTime tmp = start;

             while ( tmp < end )
             {
                 months++;
                 tmp = tmp.AddMonths( 1 );
             }

             return months;
        }
    }
}

Usage:

Int32 months = DateTime.Now.DiffMonths( DateTime.Now.AddYears( 5 ) );

You can create another method called DiffYears and apply exactly the same logic as above and AddYears instead of AddMonths in the while loop.

Answer 2

There are not a lot of clear answers on this because you are always assuming things.

This solution calculates between two dates the months between assuming you want to save the day of month for comparison, (meaning that the day of the month is considered in the calculation)

Example, if you have a date of 30 Jan 2012, 29 Feb 2012 will not be a month but 01 March 2013 will.

It's been tested pretty thoroughly, probably will clean it up later as we use it, but here:

private static int TotalMonthDifference(DateTime dtThis, DateTime dtOther)
{
    int intReturn = 0;
    bool sameMonth = false;

    if (dtOther.Date < dtThis.Date) //used for an error catch in program, returns -1
        intReturn--;

    int dayOfMonth = dtThis.Day; //captures the month of day for when it adds a month and doesn't have that many days
    int daysinMonth = 0; //used to caputre how many days are in the month

    while (dtOther.Date > dtThis.Date) //while Other date is still under the other
    {
        dtThis = dtThis.AddMonths(1); //as we loop, we just keep adding a month for testing
        daysinMonth = DateTime.DaysInMonth(dtThis.Year, dtThis.Month); //grabs the days in the current tested month

        if (dtThis.Day != dayOfMonth) //Example 30 Jan 2013 will go to 28 Feb when a month is added, so when it goes to march it will be 28th and not 30th
        {
            if (daysinMonth < dayOfMonth) // uses day in month max if can't set back to day of month
                dtThis.AddDays(daysinMonth - dtThis.Day);
            else
                dtThis.AddDays(dayOfMonth - dtThis.Day);
        }
        if (((dtOther.Year == dtThis.Year) && (dtOther.Month == dtThis.Month))) //If the loop puts it in the same month and year
        {
            if (dtOther.Day >= dayOfMonth) //check to see if it is the same day or later to add one to month
                intReturn++;
            sameMonth = true; //sets this to cancel out of the normal counting of month
        }
        if ((!sameMonth)&&(dtOther.Date > dtThis.Date))//so as long as it didn't reach the same month (or if i started in the same month, one month ahead, add a month)
            intReturn++;
    }
    return intReturn; //return month
}

Answer 3

Here is a simple solution that works at least for me. It's probably not the fastest though because it uses the cool DateTime's AddMonth feature in a loop:

public static int GetMonthsDiff(DateTime start, DateTime end)
{
    if (start > end)
        return GetMonthsDiff(end, start);

    int months = 0;
    do
    {
        start = start.AddMonths(1);
        if (start > end)
            return months;

        months++;
    }
    while (true);
}

Answer 4

In my case it is required to calculate the complete month from the start date to the day prior to this day in the next month or from start to end of month.

Ex: from 1/1/2018 to 31/1/2018 is a complete month
Ex2: from 5/1/2018 to 4/2/2018 is a complete month

so based on this here is my solution:

public static DateTime GetMonthEnd(DateTime StartDate, int MonthsCount = 1)
{
    return StartDate.AddMonths(MonthsCount).AddDays(-1);
}
public static Tuple<int, int> CalcPeriod(DateTime StartDate, DateTime EndDate)
{
    int MonthsCount = 0;
    Tuple<int, int> Period;
    while (true)
    {
        if (GetMonthEnd(StartDate) > EndDate)
            break;
        else
        {
            MonthsCount += 1;
            StartDate = StartDate.AddMonths(1);
        }
    }
    int RemainingDays = (EndDate - StartDate).Days + 1;
    Period = new Tuple<int, int>(MonthsCount, RemainingDays);
    return Period;
}

Usage:

Tuple<int, int> Period = CalcPeriod(FromDate, ToDate);

Note: in my case it was required to calculate the remaining days after the complete months so if it's not your case you could ignore the days result or even you could change the method return from tuple to integer.

Answer 5

public static int PayableMonthsInDuration(DateTime StartDate, DateTime EndDate)
{
    int sy = StartDate.Year; int sm = StartDate.Month; int count = 0;
    do
    {
        count++;if ((sy == EndDate.Year) && (sm >= EndDate.Month)) { break; }
        sm++;if (sm == 13) { sm = 1; sy++; }
    } while ((EndDate.Year >= sy) || (EndDate.Month >= sm));
    return (count);
}

This solution is for Rental/subscription calculation, where difference doesn't means to be subtraction, it's meant to be the span in within those two dates.

Answer 6

Assuming the day of the month is irrelevant (i.e. the diff between 2011.1.1 and 2010.12.31 is 1), with date1 > date2 giving a positive value and date2 > date1 a negative value

((date1.Year - date2.Year) * 12) + date1.Month - date2.Month

Or, assuming you want an approximate number of 'average months' between the two dates, the following should work for all but very huge date differences.

date1.Subtract(date2).Days / (365.25 / 12)

Note, if you were to use the latter solution then your unit tests should state the widest date range which your application is designed to work with and validate the results of the calculation accordingly.

---

Update (with thanks to Gary)

If using the 'average months' method, a slightly more accurate number to use for the 'average number of days per year' is 365.2425.