DataTime - TryParseExact

[Brian R.]

We are working with a system (black box to us) that provides date/time in the
following string format:

"Tues Sep 30 15:16:41 PDT 2008"

Where PDT is the local time zone.

We need to parse this into a DateTime object to be used for comparisons and
the problem is that we can't figure out how to get the time zone to parse.
We tried 'zzz' for that part of the format string, but it seems to be
expecting +/- hours and not a string PDT.

How can I parse this without having to create a switch statement for every
possible time zone?

Getting them to write out GMT (UTC) time is not an option as it is a black
box.

Thanks,

 

[Zhi-Xin Ye [MSFT]]

Dear Brian,

As far as I konw, the DateTime parsing process does not support time zone
abbreviations like PDT, EST, etc.

If you are always in the time zone indicated by the time zone abbreviation
in the datetime string, you can remove the time zone abbreviation from the
string before parsing it, and treat the result as a local datetime.

If you are not always in the time zone indicated by the time zone
abbreviation, you have to handle the time zone abbreviation part by
yourself. For example, you can replace the "PDT" with "-0700", and so on.

Sincerely,
Zhi-Xin Ye
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[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

We are working with a system (black box to us) that provides date/time inthe
following string format:

"Tues Sep 30 15:16:41 PDT 2008"

Where PDT is the local time zone.  

We need to parse this into a DateTime object to be used for comparisons and
the problem is that we can't figure out how to get the time zone to parse..  
We tried 'zzz' for that part of the format string, but it seems to be
expecting +/- hours and not a string PDT.

How can I parse this without having to create a switch statement for every
possible time zone?  

If you're using .NET 3.5, I suggest you look at the TimeZoneInfo
class. Then you can take the original string, try to find the timezone
part of it (if it's in a nice standard format, that will help a lot!)
and find the TimeZoneInfo for it. Remove the timezone part from the
string, then parse the rest. Then you've got a DateTime (or
DateTimeOffset) and a TimeZoneInfo - between the two of them, you can
work out whatever you need to.

Jon

 

[Brian R.]

Thanks for the information. I will try looking into 3.5 and see if I can
make use of that data.

Thanks,