Question of formatting a string to DateTime

[Bill]

I am being passed a string value in the form of MMddyyyy that needs to be
converted to DateTime. Do I need to first convert the string to MM/dd/yyyy
before calling the DateTime.Parse(string) method?

 

[Kyril Magnos]

Nope, just use DateTime.Parse(). It should parse it without problems.

HTH,

Kyril

 

[Shakir Hussain]

You can have space characters though to parse using
DateTimeStyles.AllowWhiteSpaces.

In your case, you may have to insert "/". If month and day are switched, you
have to specify FormatProvider in the argument.

IFormatProvider culture = new CultureInfo("en-US", true);

Try this

string myDate= "02 22 2004";
IFormatProvider culture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US",
true);
DateTime a =
DateTime.Parse(myDate,culture,System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.AllowWhite
Spaces);

 

[Ignacio Machin \( .NET/ C# MVP \)]

Hi Bill,


The best way of do it is using DateTime.ParseExact() this method let you
especify the format of the string being converted, in your case you can try

DateTime.ParseExact( stringToConvert,


Cheers,

 

[Bill]

Sounds like I will have to insert / or space. For example, if I'm passed
12102001 I will need to convert it to either 12/10/2001 or 12 10 2001.

Not difficult, but I was thinking there might be something more natural,
such as a format string.

 

[Ignacio Machin \( .NET/ C# MVP \)]

Hi

Sorry but I sent it without the code

The code looks like:
DateTime.ParseExact( stringToConvert, , "MMddyyyy", null );

Cheers,

 

[Bill]

Ah, perfect. That's exactly what I was hoping for... although a little
surprised they didn't overload this option for DateTime.Parse().