Re: datetime string given 100 nanosecond units from year 1?

From:
Christopher Pisz <nospam@notanaddress.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Wed, 15 Oct 2014 13:11:26 -0500
Message-ID:
<m1mdcb$11i$1@dont-email.me>
On 10/15/2014 11:37 AM, Victor Bazarov wrote:

On 10/15/2014 12:07 PM, Christopher Pisz wrote:

Any suggestions on how to get a datetime string from a 64 bit unsigned
long long which represents 100 nanosecond ticks from midnight Jan 01
0001 ?

I cannot use chrono because I have to support XP using msvc10 :/

I can use the boost library but it seems I cannot initialize a ptime
with a year of 0001 to perform the math.

I could do manual division on how many nanoseconds are in a year myself,
but it isn't always the same, right? Leap years and DST come into play.
I'd also have to figure if it would even fit in a 64bit long.


Windows has FileTimeToSystemTime (or something like that) function and
similar ones. Why do you think you need to do it "manually"?

V


It seems those structures take a time since 1601. I don't see anything
under the Time Functions reference that can handle a date since 0001 for me.

I did come up with this, which might work as long as times are local and
American.

std::string DateTimeToString(const WS_DATETIME & value)
{
     std::string timeAsText;

     // Ticks is in units of 100 nanoseconds since Jan 01 0001 00:00:00
     const long long ticksFromCommonEraEpochToUnixEpoch =
621355968000000000ULL;

     // Zero seems to represent a NULL value
     // We'll return an empty string to represent a NULL value
     if( !value.ticks )
     {
         return timeAsText;
     }
     // Make sure we can use our calculation method
     else if(value.ticks < ticksFromCommonEraEpochToUnixEpoch)
     {
         const std::string msg = "Times before unix epoch are not valid";
         throw Shared::Exception(__FILE__, __LINE__, msg);
     }

     const unsigned long long ticksSinceUnixEpoch = value.ticks -
ticksFromCommonEraEpochToUnixEpoch;
     const unsigned long long secondsSinceUnixEpoch =
ticksSinceUnixEpoch / 10000000ULL;

     boost::posix_time::ptime theTime(boost::gregorian::date(1970, 1, 01),
 
boost::posix_time::time_duration(0,0,0));

     theTime = theTime + boost::posix_time::seconds(secondsSinceUnixEpoch);

     timeAsText = boost::posix_time::to_iso_extended_string(theTime);
     return timeAsText;
  }

I got my magic number ticksFromCommonEraEpochToUnixEpoch from making a
seperate .NET console project, since that is where the data is coming from.

class Program
     {
         static void Main(string[] args)
         {
             DateTime dt1 = new DateTime(0001, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0,
DateTimeKind.Local);
             DateTime dt2 = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0,
DateTimeKind.Local);
             TimeSpan span = dt2 - dt1;
             Console.WriteLine("Seconds = " + span.TotalSeconds.ToString());
         }
     }

I'll have to compare against some test data to see if I did it right.
Seems like a big pain in the butt. If MS decided to use 0001 as an epoch
they should have a function to convert it using that epoch.

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