I need to convert a string datetime format to a DateTime field which should be in system Datetime format?
I've tried Convert.ToDateTime, DateTime.Parse, DateTime.ParseExact but all of them convert to dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss format.
My string is in yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm format.
I was trying TryParseExact and specifying the culture also but I just couldn't understand that how it works. Below is the code that I am trying and my item.CreationDate is in "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" format
DateTime dateTime;
bool isSuccess1 = DateTime.TryParseExact(item.CreationDate, "yyyyy-MM-dd HH:mm", CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, DateTimeStyles.None, out dateTime);
DateTime result = dateTime;
Thanks in advance.
Can it be this easy? - yyyyy-MM-dd HH:mm has 5 ys in your example, not 4.
When you convert a string to DateTime you must state what format the input is in (as you have). If the conversion succeeded the DateTime object will hold the data for all the date parts (years, months, days etc.) and if you want to view them as a date again you must state what format you want to see them in. When using DateTime.TryParseExact it's worth noting that if the conversion fails it will set the value to the DateTime.MinValue.
There are various ways of showing the date again. The most common is stating the custom format for the date as a string. Another way is to use a standard format.
var creationDate = "2020-04-13 13:23";
DateTime.TryParseExact(creationDate, "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm", CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, DateTimeStyles.None, out DateTime dateTime);
var myCulture = new CultureInfo("en-GB");
if(dateTime > DateTime.MinValue)
{
Console.WriteLine("Your custom format date is: " + dateTime.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm"));
Console.WriteLine("Your standard format date is: " + dateTime.ToString("g", myCulture));
}
When you put this into a console app the results are like this:
With some of the standard format ones you will need to define the culture as it will be different for something like the en-US compared to something like zh-CN. In my case I used 'en-GB'. Here's a list of the accepted culture codes.
Related
I have two Timestamps that are saved to and read from two XML files.
Currently I am reading the timestamps from the xml files in a WCF Service method, so they are coming in as Strings , but I need them to be converted into DateTime so they can be compared.
The obvious Convert.ToDateTime(TimeStampString) renders this error at Runtime -
String was not recognized as a valid DateTime
As does
DateTime.ParseExact(TimeStampString, "mm/dd/yyyy hh:MM:ss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Both Timestamps are in the correct format for DateTime (mm/dd/yyyy hh:MM:ss).
I've even tried splitting the timstamp strings into String[] and assembling my own DateTime object by hand, and I still received the error.
Is this a format issue? How can I make my String a valid DateTime?
It's a format issue
mm/dd/yy hh:MM:ss
should be
MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss
(basically, swap the upper case MM in the date & the lowercase mm in the time)
I resolved the issue by removing any attempts to alter the format from US, so Strings came in with US format - then used an IFormatProvider to alter the format at conversion time.
IFormatProvider localFormat = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("fr-FR", true);
DateTime ContentLastUpdatedTime = DateTime.Parse(ContentLastUpdatedStamp, localFormat , System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.AssumeLocal);
DateTime ContentLastGrabbedTime = DateTime.Parse(LastGrabbedTimeStamp, localFormat , System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.AssumeLocal);
You need to use
DateTime.ParseExact(TimeStampString, "MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
instead of
DateTime.ParseExact(TimeStampString, "mm/dd/yyyy hh:MM:ss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
The issue is lower case mm which is used for minutes, You need MM upper case MM, plus your date is in 24 hours format, and you need upper case HH for hour part , so your format should be:
MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss
(considering you have yyyy in your original code based on your comment)
See: Custom Date and Time Format Strings
Here you go
var dtedatetime = DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:sszzz");
DateTimeOffset dto;
bool bIsParsed = DateTimeOffset.TryParseExact(dtedatetime , "yyyy'-'MM'-'dd'T'HH':'mm':'sszzz",
System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.AdjustToUniversal, out dto);
var result = dto.DateTime;
I need to compare two date format strings:
dateString in "dd-MMM-yy" format
with
referenceDateString in "M/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt" format respectively.
For that, I need to convert the dateString = "dd-MMM-yy" to "M/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt".
However, Got an error while trying to do that:
"Error: string was not recognized as a valid datetime".
The C# code I used given below.
string dateString = "19-Dec-14";
string AsofDate = DateTime.ParseExact(dateString, "M/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Edit 1:
In the actual code the dateString obtaining after reading a csv file which is supplied as "19-Dec-14", that's why it's in the string format.
Please help, am pretty new to C#. Thanks.
Habib already gave the answer on his comments, I try to add it as an answer;
From DateTime.ParseExact(String, String, IFormatProvider)
Converts the specified string representation of a date and time to its
DateTime equivalent using the specified format and culture-specific
format information. The format of the string representation must match
the specified format exactly.
In your case, clearly they don't. First, you need to parse your string to DateTime with proper format (which is dd-MMM-yy with an english-based culture), then you can get the string represention of your DateTime with specific format.
string s = "19-Dec-14";
DateTime dt;
if(DateTime.TryParseExact(s, "dd-MMM-yy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None, out dt))
{
dt.ToString("M/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture).Dump();
// Result will be 12/19/2014 12:00:00 AM
}
It's not entirely clear what you are trying to do, but in order to parse that date you have on the first line, you would use something like this:
DateTime AsofDate = DateTime.ParseExact(dateString, "dd-MMM-yy", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Note a couple things here: I've changed the data type of AsofDate from string to DateTime because that's what DateTime.ParseExact returns. Also, I've modified the custom format string to match the format of the string you are trying to parse as a date ("19-Dec-14").
I have a custom date format that I want to convert to Datetime so I can then insert into my database, I tried using Datetime.ParseExact() But I think I'm misunderstanding something as the code throws a System.FormatException.
I have the following date format from a csv
> 6/11/2014 9:00
and I wish to convert it to the mysql datetime format
> 0000-00-00 00:00:00 OR yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss
Notice they haven't included the seconds in the original date so I am unsure (without appending them to the end) how to set all records to just have "00" for seconds as it is not available.
I tried the following which throws an exception
DateTime myDate = DateTime.ParseExact("6/11/2014 9:00", "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm",
System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
first thing you need to convert string to date time and than convert datetime tos tring
string strd = "6/11/2014 9:00";
DateTime dt ;
//convert datetime string to datetime
if(DateTime.TryParse(strd, out dt))
{
//convert datetime to custom datetime format
Console.WriteLine("The current date and time: {0: yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss}",
dt); ;
}
output
I know this is late to answer that but I'm really surprised none of answer consider to use IFormatProvider to prevent a possible parsing error because of / format specifier or considering your string is a standard date and time format for your CurrentCulture or not so you can or can't use DateTime.TryParse(string, out DateTime) overload directly.
First of all, let's look at what DateTime.ParseExact documentation says:
Converts the specified string representation of a date and time to its
DateTime equivalent. The format of the string representation must
match a specified format exactly or an exception is thrown.
In your case, they don't match. You should use d/MM/yyyy H:mm format to parse your example string with a culture that have / as a DateSeparator. I almost always suggest to use DateTime.TryParseExact method in this kind of situations;
string s = "6/11/2014 9:00";
DateTime dt;
if(DateTime.TryParseExact(s, "d/MM/yyyy H:mm", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None, out dt))
{
Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"));
// result will be 2014-11-06 09:00:00
}
If you know formats of your dates, then you can do this:
string stringDate = "6/11/2014 9:00";
//Your date formats of input
string[] dateFormats = new string[]
{
"d/MM/yyyy H:mm",
"dd/MM/yyyy H:mm",
"dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm",
"dd/MM/yyyy H:mm:ss",
"dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss"
/* And other formats */
};
DateTime convertedDate;
bool isSuccessful = DateTime.TryParseExact(stringDate, dateFormats,
System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.None, out convertedDate);
if (isSuccessful)
{
//If conversion was successful then you can print your date at any format you like
//because you have your date as DateTime object
Console.WriteLine(convertedDate.ToString("dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss")); /* Or other format you want to print */
}
I hope it will be helpful to you.
I am working on an ASP.NET Mvc application with C# and facing a problem when I try to upload a .CSV file in order to save its data to database.
The problem comes from the date column of the .CSV file. There are two formats of date used in that column. The first one is "mm/dd/yyyy" that I have no problem to parse to a DateTime object by the following code:
// for the date : 09/30/2014
DateTime tempo = Convert.ToDateTime("09/30/2014");
The second format is "mm/dd/yy". The same method above doesn't work for this format and throws an exception
// for the date : 09/30/14
DateTime tempo = Convert.ToDateTime("09/30/14");
// this line throws ;
// [09/30/14] String was not recognized as a valid DateTime. exception
Is there a solution which works for both of date formats ?
Thanks for your help.
First, mm specifier is for minutes, MM specifier is for months. Convert.ToDateTime method uses your CurrentCulture by default. That means MM/dd/yy is not a standard date and time format your CurrentCulture but MM/dd/yyyy is.
You can use custom date and time formatting string like;
string s = "09/30/14";
DateTime date;
if(DateTime.TryParseExact(s, "MM/dd/yy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None, out date))
{
// Successfully parse
}
Be aware "/" custom format specifier has a special meaning of replace me with the current culture or supplied culture date separator. That means even if your string and format matches, you parsing will fail.
Is there a solution which works for both of date formats ?
DateTime.TryParseExact method has an overload that takes formats as a string array. If your string matches one of your formats, it will returns true.
string s = "09/30/14";
sstring[] formats = {"MM/dd/yy", "MM/dd/yyyy"};
DateTime date;
if(DateTime.TryParseExact(s, formats, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None, out date))
{
// Successfully parse
}
Also you can see all standard date and time patters of your CurrentCulture like;
foreach (var format in CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.
DateTimeFormat.
GetAllDateTimePatterns())
{
Console.WriteLine (format);
}
I have Date that comes in Excel File.
So far the requirement is, it can come in the Format as YYYY-MM-DD.
So I wrote the following code to convert it into MM/dd/yyyy:
DateTime excelDate = DateTime.ParseExact(value,
"yyyy-MM-dd",
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None);
value = value != "" ? excelDate.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy") : value;
But now the requirement is : it can come in any format as YYYY-MM-DD or MM/DD/YYYY or YYYYMMDD or MM-DD-YY.
Wonderin ghow to deal with these in a short way and convert that into MM/DD/YYYY ?
There is an overload to ParseExact that takes and array of format strings.
var formats = new string[] {"yyyy-MM-dd", "MM/dd/yyyy", "yyyyMMdd", "MM-dd-yy"};
DateTime excelDate = DateTime.ParseExact(value,
formats,
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None);
If you don't know in advance exactly what formats might be coming in, DateTime.Parse() will attempt to detect the incoming format for you:
DateTime excelDate = DateTime.Parse(value
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Note that you can also pass a DateTimeStyles parameter, but may not want or need to, depending on the behavior you want.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/kc8s65zs.aspx for details.