In C#, how do I calculate someone's age based on a DateTime type birthday?

Question

Given a DateTime representing a person\'s birthday, how do I calculate their age in years?

Answer 1

Here's yet another answer:

public static int AgeInYears(DateTime birthday, DateTime today)
{
    return ((today.Year - birthday.Year) * 372 + (today.Month - birthday.Month) * 31 + (today.Day - birthday.Day)) / 372;
}

This has been extensively unit-tested. It does look a bit "magic". The number 372 is the number of days there would be in a year if every month had 31 days.

The explanation of why it works (lifted from here) is:

Let's set Yn = DateTime.Now.Year, Yb = birthday.Year, Mn = DateTime.Now.Month, Mb = birthday.Month, Dn = DateTime.Now.Day, Db = birthday.Day

age = Yn - Yb + (31*(Mn - Mb) + (Dn - Db)) / 372

We know that what we need is either Yn-Yb if the date has already been reached, Yn-Yb-1 if it has not.

a) If Mn, we have -341 <= 31*(Mn-Mb) <= -31 and -30 <= Dn-Db <= 30

-371 <= 31*(Mn - Mb) + (Dn - Db) <= -1

With integer division

(31*(Mn - Mb) + (Dn - Db)) / 372 = -1

b) If Mn=Mb and Dn, we have 31*(Mn - Mb) = 0 and -30 <= Dn-Db <= -1

With integer division, again

(31*(Mn - Mb) + (Dn - Db)) / 372 = -1

c) If Mn>Mb, we have 31 <= 31*(Mn-Mb) <= 341 and -30 <= Dn-Db <= 30

1 <= 31*(Mn - Mb) + (Dn - Db) <= 371

With integer division

(31*(Mn - Mb) + (Dn - Db)) / 372 = 0

d) If Mn=Mb and Dn>Db, we have 31*(Mn - Mb) = 0 and 1 <= Dn-Db <= 30

With integer division, again

(31*(Mn - Mb) + (Dn - Db)) / 372 = 0

e) If Mn=Mb and Dn=Db, we have 31*(Mn - Mb) + Dn-Db = 0

and therefore (31*(Mn - Mb) + (Dn - Db)) / 372 = 0