I have a string in my DB2 database which is physically located in US. I have a column value set to this string '2011-12-31 00:00:00' which indicates year 2011, month december and day 1st of the december.
I'm retrieving this as a string in my client program which is running in UK and the UI is set to local culture(the default). My client program also runs in US as well as in Hongkong with the culture set to the local culture there i.e US and HK respectively.
I'm using the following code for parsing the string into a datetime. I'm not very sure whether this is going to work, and I could't find any good link which points me to that direction. Could you please tell me whether this will work in various cultures, if not why?
string quarterStartDate = "2011-12-01 00:00:00";
DateTime quarterStart;
DateTime.TryParse(quarterStartDate, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, DateTimeStyles.None, out quarterStart);
return quarterStart;
I have a test which works as per my requirement, but again 'am not too sure whether this will work when the UI is going to run in a different country.
string quarterStarter = "2011-12-01 00:00:00";
DateTime quarterStart;
DateTime.TryParse(quarterStarter,CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,DateTimeStyles.None,out quarterStart);
Assert.IsTrue(quarterStart.Year == 2011);
Assert.IsTrue(quarterStart.Month == 12);
Assert.IsTrue(quarterStart.Day == 1);
I would strongly suggest that as you know the format in advance, you use TryParseExact instead of TryParse:
bool success = DateTime.TryParseExact(quarterStarter, "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss",
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None,
out quarterStart);
Note that you should check the return value of TryParseExact to check that it's parsed correctly - if you're fine with an exception, just use ParseExact instead.
It's entirely possible that your existing code would work just fine - after all, you're already providing the invariant culture - but specifying the format makes it clearer what you really expect, and also means you'll detect if a value in an unexpected format is provided.
You can use ParseExact to pull the date, for example:
var s = "2011-12-01 00:00:00";
var dt = DateTime.ParseExact(s,"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss",CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
You can set a specific format that does not change with culture.
DateTime dt;
DateTime.TryParseExact(dateTime,
"yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm tt",
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None,
out dt);
Related
I am using the code below to check the datetime and it is working fine in my machine but once after deployment, I am getting
"String was not recognized as a valid DateTime."
Please provide me the solution to work in all machine.
DateTime date1 = DateTime.Parse("16/05"); MM/dd
string todaydate = DateTime.Now.ToString("MM/dd");
if (Convert.ToDateTime(todaydate) > Convert.ToDateTime(date1.ToString("MM/dd")))
{ //Logic }
Honestly, since both answer didn't satisfied me, here is my two cent..
Let's look at your code line by line;
DateTime date1 = DateTime.Parse("16/05");
DateTime.Parse uses your CurrentCulture settings by default if don't provide any IFormatProvider as a second parameter on it's overloads. That means, if your one of standard date and time patterns of your CurrentCulture includes dd/MM (or your current culture DateSeparator since / format separator has a special meaning of replace me with current culture date separator) format, this parsing operation will be successful. That means this line might throws FormatException that depends on the current culture settings.
string todaydate = DateTime.Now.ToString("MM/dd");
DateTime.Now returns a local current time. With it's ToString() method you try to get it's string representation with MM/dd format. BUT WAIT! You used / format specifier again and still, you didn't use any IFormatProvider. Since this format specifier replace itself with current culture date separator, your todaydate might be 05/16, 05-16 or 05.16. That's totally depends on what date separator your current culture use.
Convert.ToDateTime(todaydate)
Convert.ToDateTime method uses DateTime.Parse explicitly. That means,since you didn't provide any IFormatProvider it will be use your CurrentCulture again and it's standard date and time formats. As I said, todaydate might be 05/16, 05-16 or 05.16 as a result. But there is no guarantee that your current culture parse this string successfully because it may not have MM/dd in it's standard date and time formats. If it parse "16/05" successfully, that means it has dd/MM format, in such a case, it definitely can't have MM/dd as a standard date and time format. A culture can't parse dd/MM and MM/dd formats at the same time. In such a case, it can't know that 01/02 string should parse as 2nd January or 1st February, right?
Convert.ToDateTime(date1.ToString("MM/dd"))
Same as here. As todaydate string, this will create "05/16" (it depends on current culture date separator of course) result and still there is no guarantee to parse this successfully.
And as said in comments, there is no point to parse your string to DateTime and get it's same string representation as well.
I strongly suspect you try to compare your current date is bigger than your parsed DateTime or not, you can use DateTime.Today property to compare with it. This property gets DateTime as current date part plus midnight as time part. For example;
DateTime dt;
if(DateTime.TryParseExact("16/05", "dd/MM", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None, out dt))
{
if(DateTime.Today > dt)
{
// Your operation
}
}
DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact("16/05", "dd/MM", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
if (DateTime.Today > dt)
{
// your application logic
}
DateTime dt = // From whatever source
if (DateTime.Now.Ticks > dt.Ticks)
{
// Do logic
}
As title suggests, what I want to do is to convert my date-string e.g.
"6/6/2014 12:24:30 PM" (M/d/yyyy h:mm:ss tt) format
to
"YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.SSSZ" format.
I am trying in the following way. It's not giving me any exception, but I am getting the value like :
"YYYY-06-DDT12:24:30.SSSZ"
How can I exactly achieve this?
string LastSyncDateTime = "6/6/2014 12:24:30 PM";
DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact(LastSyncDateTime, "M/d/yyyy h:mm:ss tt",CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
string result = dt.ToString("YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.SSSZ");
Data time Formats Can't recognize, the non Case sensitive chars in some systems due to their internal settings. Please refer the below code, which works fine
string result = dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.SSSZ");
The above code will result as 2014-06-06T12:24:30.SSSZ
EDIT :
The below snippet will give you milliseconds as well
dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.fffZ");
The simplest way is to use the "o" date formatter, like this:
dt.ToString("o");
This method will give you a timestring in the ISO 8601 format, something like this:
2014-12-25T11:56:54.9571247Z
but, since that ISO 8601 uses more than 3 decimal digits to define the second, if you only want to stop at milliseconds you can use the full formatting string and write down ss.fffzzz at the end, like this:
dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.fffzzz");
and the result will be:
2014-12-25T11:56:54.957Z
For more informations you can refer to THIS LIST of date formatting options.
but I am getting the value like "YYYY-06-DDT12:24:30.SSSZ"
Let me explain why you get this result. Since there is no custom date and time format as YYYY, DD, SSS or Z, these characters are copied to the result string unchanged.
I strongly suspect you want to use yyyy, dd, fff and z format specifiers instead.
You can use DateTime.TryParseExact method like;
string s = "6/6/2014 12:24:30 PM";
DateTime dt;
if(DateTime.TryParseExact(s, "M/d/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt",
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None, out dt))
{
Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.fffz"));
}
Here a demonstration on Ideone.
Result will be 2014-06-06T12:24:30.000+3 on my machine because my time zone is UTC +3 right now. Time zone information might change based on your UTC value as well.
Try this -
dt.ToString("o");
dt.ToString("O");
you can see this link
hope this helps
You can use date in this format :("yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.000Z")
Or in manually by changing the time zone you can easily use the date set time zone to (GMT:000(Greenwich mean time)) in your setting tab and make sure data type is date/time.
Use yyyy for Year and dd for date
string result = dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.SSSZ");
Here is the quick solution:
DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.fffZ")
I have an issue similar to this > Format exception String was not recognized as a valid DateTime
However, my spec requires a date format of ddMMyyyy, therefore I have modified my code but I am still getting the same error
DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact(now.ToString(), #"ddMMyyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
I am unclear why.
You code fails because you are attempting to parse a date in the format ddMMyyyy, when by default DateTime.ToString() will produce a format with both date and time in the current culture.
For myself in Australia that would be dd/MM/yyy hh:mm:ss p e.g. 11/10/2013 11:07:03 AM
You must realise is that the DateTime object actually stores a date as individual components (e.g. day, month, year) that only needs to be format when you output the value into whatever format you desire.
E.g.
DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
string formattedDate = now.ToString("ddMMyyyy", DateTimeFormatInfo.InvariantInfo);
For more information see the api doc:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8tfzyc64.aspx
For ParseExact to work, the string coming in must match exactly the pattern matching. In the other question you mentioned, the text was coming from a web form where the format was specified to be exactly one format.
In your case you generated the date using DateTime.Now.ToString() which will not be in the format ddMMyyyy. If you want to make the date round trip, you need to specify the format both places:
DateTime now = DateTime.Now;
DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact(now.ToString("ddMMyyyy"), #"ddMMyyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Debug your code and look at what the result of now.ToString() is, it's is not in the format of "ddMMyyyy", which is why the parse is failing. If you want to output now as a string in the ddMMyyy format, then try now.ToSTring("ddMMyyyy") instead.
now.ToString() does not return a string formatted in that way. Try using now.ToString("ddMMyyyy").
You might be better off testing with a static string like "30041999"
How to populate C# DateTime object from this "03-06-2012 08:00 am" string.
I'm trying some code of follwoing type:
DateTime lectureTime = DateTime.Parse("03-06-2012 08:00 am");
I am using jQuery based this http://trentrichardson.com/examples/timepicker/ plugin to generate date time.
Update --
So many answers below and lot of stuff to clear basics for this small issue
From the below snapshot u can see what I tried and what i received during debugging in visual studio
string lectureTime = "03-06-2012 08:00 am";
DateTime time = DateTime.ParseExact(lectureTime , "dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
dd: days [00-31]
MM: months [00-12]
yyyy: years [0000-9999]
'-': these are separated with a dash
hh: hours [00-12]
mm: minutes[00-60]
tt: time [am, pm] (case insensitive)
If you have the correct culture, your code works without modification. But you may be using a different date formatting from the program that generated the string.
I'd recommend always specifying a CultureInfo when:
Parsing a DateTime generated by another system.
Outputting a DateTime that will be parsed by another system (not just shown to your user).
Try this:
CultureInfo cultureInfo = new CultureInfo("en-GB"); // Or something else?
DateTime lectureTime = DateTime.Parse("03-06-2012 08:00 am", cultureInfo);
See it working online: ideone
Difference between DateTime.Parse and DateTime.ParseExact
If you want .NET to make its best effort at parsing the string then use DateTime.Parse. It can handle a wide variety of common formats.
If you know in advance exactly how the dates should be formatted, and you want to reject anything that differs from this format (even if it could be parsed correctly and without ambiguity) then use DateTime.ParseExact.
You need to use DateTime.ParseExact. Something like
DateTime lectureTime = DateTime.ParseExact("03-06-2012 08:00 am", "dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
As you can see in the below screen shot. I have Date which is 7/12/2011 12:00:00 AM. Date is described wrong even if I format it. 7 should be the day and 12 is the month.
How I fix that to get proper formatting for yellow return string?
In the below screen shot the Date is 28/12/2011 11:00 where 28 is day and 12 is month. Trying to convert that string into DateTime to save into SQL Server DateTime field but gives conversion problem. Anyone tell me why is that and How to fix it?
Solution:
I solved problem like below. When I want saving date in SQL Server 2008 r2 the default was saved like 2011-08-12 11:00:00.000 which was causing problem. I changed that formatting Date when it was going to be saved in SQL like below and it worked
DateTime n = Convert.ToDateTime(start_date);
var h = String.Format("{0:dd/MM/yyyy}", n);
if (start_date != "")
{
changedEvent.start_date = Convert.ToDateTime(h);
}
Output now is 2011-12-08 11:00:00.000. Do you think any clean work around?
You should call DateTime.ParseExact(start_date, "dd/MM/yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)
Try:
DateTime.ParseExact(str, "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss TT", null); //28/12/2011 11:00:00 AM
DateTime.ParseExact(str, "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm", null); //28/12/2011 11:00
I think you are addressing the wrong problem. If you want DateTime to recognize your locale date format, then you should make sure the servers date locale is set for your local one. Then, DateTime will convert the date correctly without conversion.
If that's not possible (say you're using a shared server in a different locale) then the ParseExact method would be one solution, but it will only fix some of the problem. For instance, dates posted and model bound will attempt to parse in the servers locale format.
You may need to set your locale explicitly, using something like this:
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("es-MX");