Why can't DateTime.Parse parse UTC date

Why can't it parse this:

DateTime.Parse("Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 UTC")

It can't parse that string because "UTC" is not a valid time zone designator.

UTC time is denoted by adding a 'Z' to the end of the time string, so your parsing code should look like this:

DateTime.Parse("Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00Z");

From the Wikipedia article on ISO 8601

If the time is in UTC, add a 'Z' directly after the time without a space. 'Z' is the zone designator for the zero UTC offset. "09:30 UTC" is therefore represented as "09:30Z" or "0930Z". "14:45:15 UTC" would be "14:45:15Z" or "144515Z".

UTC time is also known as 'Zulu' time, since 'Zulu' is the NATO phonetic alphabet word for 'Z'.

Assuming you use the format "o" for your datetime so you have "2016-07-24T18:47:36Z", there is a very simple way to handle this.

Call DateTime.Parse("2016-07-24T18:47:36Z").ToUniversalTime().

What happens when you call DateTime.Parse("2016-07-24T18:47:36Z") is you get a DateTime set to the local timezone. So it converts it to the local time.

The ToUniversalTime() changes it to a UTC DateTime and converts it back to UTC time.

Just use that:

var myDateUtc = DateTime.SpecifyKind(DateTime.Parse("Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00"), DateTimeKind.Utc);

if (myDateUtc.Kind == DateTimeKind.Utc)
{
     Console.WriteLine("Yes. I am UTC!");
}

You can test this code using the online c# compiler:

http://rextester.com/

I hope it helps.

You need to specify the format:

DateTime date = DateTime.ParseExact(
    "Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 UTC", 
    "ddd, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss UTC", 
    CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

or use the AdjustToUniversal DateTimeStyle in a call to

DateTime.ParseExact(String, String[], IFormatProvider, DateTimeStyles)

Why can't DateTime.Parse parse UTC date

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