I am trying to convert a string into datetime with the following C# code,
DateTime dTo = DateTime.ParseExact(dateTo, "mm/dd/yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
eachtime I pass dateTo as 1/1/2010 it fails, instead it needs the string to be 01/01/2010.
What string format should I use to support both 01/01/2010 and 1/1/2010?
Using the following date format expression will allow you to use either single or double digit day and month elements.
"M/d/yyyy"
Note that the capital M is significant - a lower case m is the placeholder for minutes.
You will find more information related to date format strings here.
You can use the following Powershell command to test them.
[DateTime]::ParseExact('01/01/2010', 'M/d/yyyy', $null)
Capital M is month, little m is mins i think.
But to the point of the question, use Parse. ParseExact implies you know the exact format of the input.
You could try this format: MM/dd/yyyy, but I think there's no single format string that could support both inputs. You could test if the length of your dateTo string is less than 10 characters use M/d/yyyy, otherwise MM/dd/yyyy.
Related
I was looking in the Microsoft doc's and I can't find any explanation why ParseExact doesn't understand my date.
Could somebody explain why this code throws an exception?
DateTime.ParseExact("6092019", "dMMyyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, DateTimeStyles.None)
From the docs: DateTime.ParseExact Method
If format is a custom format pattern that does not include date or
time separators (such as "yyyyMMddHHmm"), use the invariant culture
for the provider parameter and the widest form of each custom format
specifier. For example, if you want to specify hours in the format
pattern, specify the wider form, "HH", instead of the narrower form,
"H".
So in your case you probably should use approach suggested in John's answer - add "missing" zero and parse with wider date format "dd"
The problem here seems to be that d can be a one-digit or two-digit date, so the parser struggles to determine if "2102019" refers to the 2nd of November 2019, or the 21st of... and then it breaks. With delimiters, the parser is able to act more intelligently. It will happily parse "2-10-2019" using "d-MM-yyyy".
My suggested solution to your problem is to pad the string, and change your format string:
string dateToParse = "6092019";
string paddedDateToParse = dateToParse?.PadLeft(8, '0'); // 06092019
DateTime parsedDate = DateTime.ParseExact(paddedDateToParse, "ddMMyyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, DateTimeStyles.None);
Try it online
I want to parse following datetime string "2016-05-31T16:03:39.5173279Z" and receiving result is not what I would expect, I would expect that hour would be 16 not 18.
Here is a code:
string _UtcFormat= "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fffffffZ";
DateTime.ParseExact("2016-05-31T16:03:39.5173279Z", _UtcFormat, new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("de-DE"))
Any comments
You need to add DateTimeStyles.AdjustToUniversal as the last argument of DateTime.ParseExact():
DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact("2016-05-31T16:03:39.5173279Z", _UtcFormat, new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("de-DE"), DateTimeStyles.AdjustToUniversal);
The bit you've perhaps not noticed is
Kind: Local
By default, ParseExact will parse the datetime and convert it to your local timezone.
If you want to ignore that, use the overload which allows you to specify DateTimeStyles - I believe the setting you want is DateTimeStyles.AdjustToUniversal
Quote the Z, as in:
string _UtcFormat = "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fffffff'Z'";
At 16:03 UTC on May 31, 2016, it was 18:03 in Germany (their summertime is UTC+2).
In a date and time format string, the symbol Z has a special meaning. If you just want to see it as a character with no function, quote it as 'Z' within the format string.
I am facing a problem in which I need to transform dates in a given input format into a target one. Is there any standard way to do this in C#?
As an example say we have yyyy.MM.dd as the source format and the target format is MM/dd/yyy (current culture).
The problem arises since I am using a parsing strategy that gives priority to the current culture and then if it fails it tries to parse from a list of known formats. Now say we have two equivalent dates one in the source culture above (2015.12.9) and the other in the current culture (9/12/2015). Then if we attempt to parse this two dates the month will be 12 for the first case and in the second will be 9, so we have an inconsistency (they were supposed to mean be the same exact date).
I believe that if existing it should be something as
DateTime.Convert(2015.12.9, 'yyyy/MM/dd', CultureInfo.CurrentCulture).
Any ideas?
EDIT:
Thank you all for your ideas and suggestions, however the interpretation most of you gave to my question was not quite right. What most of you have answered is a direct parse in the given format and then a conversion to the CurrentCulture.
DateTime.ParseExact("2015.12.9", "yyyy.MM.dd", CultureInfo.CurrentCulture)
This will still return 12 as month, although it is in the CurrentCulture format. My question thus was, is there any standard way to transform the date in yyyy.MM.d to the format MM/dd/yyy so that the month is now in the correct place and THEN parsed it in the target culture. Such function is likely to be unexisting.
DateTime.ParseExact is what you are looking for:
DateTime parsedDate = DateTime.ParseExact("2015.12.9", "yyyy.MM.d", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Or eventualy DateTime.TryParseExact if you're not confident with input string.
I know it's late but I try to explain little bit deep if you let me..
I am facing a problem in which I need to transform dates in any format
to a target one.
There no such a thing as dates in any format. A DateTime does not have any implicit format. It just has date and time values. Looks like you have a string which formatted as date and you want to convert another string with different format.
Is there any standard way to do this in C#?
Yes. You can parse your string with DateTime.ParseExact or DateTime.TryParseExact first with specific format to DateTime and then generate it's string representation with a different format.
As an example say we have yyyy.MM.dd as the source format and the
target format is MM/dd/yyy (current culture).
I didn't understand what is the meaning of current culture in this sentences and I assume you want yyyy not yyy, but you can generate it as I described above like;
string source = "2015.12.9";
DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact(source, "yyyy.MM.d", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
string target = dt.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); // 12/09/201
The problem arises since I am using a parsing strategy that gives
priority to the current culture and then if it fails it tries to parse
from a list of known formats.
Since you didn't show any parsing strategy and there is no DateTime.Convert method in .NET Framework, I couldn't any comment.
Now say we have two equivalent dates one in the source culture above
(2015.12.9) and the other in the current culture (9/12/2015). Then if
we attempt to parse this two dates the month will be 12 and in the
second will be 9, so we have an inconsistency.
Again.. You don't have DateTime's. You have strings. And those formatted strings can't belong on any culture. Sure all cultures might parse or generate different string representations with the same format format a format does not belong any culture.
I assume you have 2 different string which different formatted and you wanna parse the input no matter which one it comes. In such a case, you can use DateTime.TryParseExact overload that takes string array for all possible formats as a parameter. Then generate it's string representation with MM/dd/yyy format and a culture that has / as a DateSeparator like InvariantCulture.
string s = "2015.12.9"; // or 9/12/2015
string[] formats = { "yyyy.MM.d", "d/MM/yyyy" };
DateTime dt;
if (DateTime.TryParseExact(s, formats, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None, out dt))
{
Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
}
The Simple and Best way to do it is Using .ToString() Method
See this code:
DateTime x =DateTime.Now;
To Convert This Just Write like This:
x.ToString("yyyyMMdd")//20151210
x.ToString("yyyy/MM/dd)//2015/12/10
x.ToString("yyyy/MMM/dd)//2015/DEC/10 //Careful About M type should be capital for month .
Hope helpful
I am trying to figure out how it is that I can keep the 0's or add them when I grab a date.
What Im getting is this:
6/15/2010
What I'm tring to get is:
06/15/2010
I have added it so that it checks the length to and if its less than 6 (im stripping the "/") it pads the left side. That solves the issue when the month is a single digit, but what about when the date is a single digit.
My ultimate goal is to have a date such as:
1/1/2010
read out like:
01/01/2010
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Use a custom format : dd/MM/yyyy, or in your case MM/dd/yyyy. Note the capital M, the small m gets you the minutes.
string s = DateTime.Now.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");
You need to use a custom DateTime format string:
string str = someDate.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy");
It depends on the format of date you are using.
For instance, dd/MM/yyyy will produce 01/05/2009 and d/M/yyyy would produce 1/5/2009
A complete reference can be found there : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4.aspx
You want something like this:
string myDate = "1/1/2010";
DateTime date = DateTime.Parse(myDate);
string formattedDate = date.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");
If the starting date is some other unrecognized format you could use DateTime.ParseExact();
Use DateTime.ParseExact() to parse the string into a valid datetime object and then use DateTime.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy") to get result in desired format.
Is there a direct way to parse an iCalendar date to .net using c#?
An iCalendar date looks like this:
2009-08-11T10:00+05:0000
I need to parse it to display it in a friendly format... thanks
string strDate = "2009-08-11T10:00+05:0000";
DateTimeFormatInfo dtfi = new DateTimeFormatInfo();
dtfi.FullDateTimePattern = "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mmzzz";
DateTime dt = DateTime.Parse(c.Substring(0, c.Length-2), dtfi);
zzz is for time zone, but is only recognized when expressed like this: +xx:xx.
I tested with your example, removing the last 2 0's then parsing with a custom DateTimeFormatInfo works.
You can use DateTime.Parse() to parse everything before the +. I do not know the iCalendar format specification but I assume after the + is the hours/minutes to add to the date before the +. So you could then use AddHours() and AddMinutes() to add the required bits to the DateTime returned by DateTime.Parse().
This requires a bit of string parsing but with a bit of regex you should be fine...
Since this is not a standard format string, but you know the exact format, you can use DateTime.ParseExact and specify a custom format string, like this:
DateTime.ParseExact(d, "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mmzzz00", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
The 'zzz' specifier represents the hours and minutes offset from UTC, and the two concluding zeros are just literals to match format with which you're dealing.