Difference between System.DateTime.Now and System.DateTime.Today

Question

Can anyone explain the difference between System.DateTime.Now and System.DateTime.Today in C#.NET? Pros and cons of each if possible.

Answer 1

DateTime.Today is DateTime.Now with time set to zero.

It is important to note that there is a difference between a DateTime value, which represents the number of ticks that have elapsed since midnight of January 1, 0000, and the string representation of that DateTime value, which expresses a date and time value in a culture-specific-specific format: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.now%28v=vs.110%29.aspx

DateTime.Now.Ticks is the actual time stored by .net (essentially UTC time), the rest are just representations (which are important for display purposes).

If the Kind property is DateTimeKind.Local it implicitly includes the time zone information of the local computer. When sending over a .net web service, DateTime values are by default serialized with time zone information included, e.g. 2008-10-31T15:07:38.6875000-05:00, and a computer in another time zone can still exactly know what time is being referred to.

So, using DateTime.Now and DateTime.Today is perfectly OK.

You usually start running into trouble when you begin confusing the string representation with the actual value and try to "fix" the DateTime, when it isn't broken.