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c#stringdatetime
Merve Gül
Merve Gül

Reputation: 1397

String to Datetime can not convert - C#

I found an example in MSDN for string to datetime conversion. But it doesn't work, fall into the catch(). Why this code block doesn't work?

DateTime dateValue;
      string dateString = "2/16/2008 12:15:12 PM";
      try {
         dateValue = DateTime.Parse(dateString);
         Console.WriteLine("'{0}' converted to {1}.", dateString, dateValue);
      }   
      catch (FormatException) {
         Console.WriteLine("Unable to convert '{0}'.", dateString);
      }

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4456

Answers (2)

aleroot
aleroot

Reputation: 72616

Try using ParseExact passing the appropriate format provider as in this example : 

string dateString = "2/16/2008 12:15:12 PM"; 
    string format = "M/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt ";

    DateTime dateTime = DateTime.ParseExact(dateString, format,
        CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Upvotes: 1

Jon Skeet
Jon Skeet

Reputation: 1499770

You're using whatever the current culture's idea of a date/time format is - and my guess is that you're in a culture where the day normally comes before the month.

If you know the format, I'd typically use the invariant culture and TryParseExact - definitely don't use Parse and a catch block; either use TryParseExact or TryParse. In this case:

if (DateTime.TryParseExact(dateString, "M/d/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt",
                           CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, 0, out dateValue))
{
    Console.WriteLine("'{0}' converted to {1}.", dateString, dateValue);
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("Unable to convert '{0}'.", dateString);
}

If you don't know the input format, but you know the culture to use, I'd just use DateTime.TryParse with the appropriate culture.

Upvotes: 5

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