How to initialize a DateTime field?

I am absolutly new in C# (I came from Java) and I have a very stupid problem

I have to initialize some DateTime fields into an object but I have some problems doing it.

In particular I am trying to inizialize these fields in this way:

mySmallVuln.Published = '1998,04,30';
mySmallVuln.LastUpdated = '2007,11,05';

But Visual Studio sign me it as error

Too many characters in character literal

What am I missing? How to solve it?

Solution 1:

mySmallVuln.Published = new DateTime(1998,04,30);

Or perhaps like this

var date = DateTime.MinValue;
if (DateTime.TryParse("1998/04/30", out date))
{
    //Sucess...
    mySmallVuln.Published = date;
}

Solution 2:

 DateTime d = default(DateTime);

The default keyword works for all data types too!

Solution 3:

Both are same....

1

mySmallVuln.Published = new DateTime(1998,04,30,0,0,0);
mySmallVuln.LastUpdated = new DateTime(2007,11,05,0,0,0);

2

mySmallVuln.Published = new DateTime(1998,04,30);
mySmallVuln.LastUpdated = new DateTime(2007,11,05);

in the first method you can assign hour minute and second respectively in parameter at the last three parameter.

Solution 4:

To initialize a DateTime value you can use the DateTime constructor:

mySmallVuln.Published = new DateTime(1998,04,30);

Solution 5:

You are using a character literal '' which can only contain one character. If you want to use a string literal use "" instead.

C# does not support DateTime-literals as opposed to VB.NET (#4/30/1998#).

Apart from that, a string is not a DateTime. If you have a string you need to parse it to DateTime first:

string published = "1998,04,30";
DateTime dtPublished = DateTime.ParseExact(published, "yyyy,MM,dd", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
mySmallVuln.Published = dtPublished; 

or you can create a DateTime via constructor:

DateTime dtPublished = new DateTime(1998, 04, 30);

or, since your string contains the year, month and day as strings, using String.Split and int.Parse:

string[] tokens = published.Split(',');
if (tokens.Length == 3 && tokens.All(t => t.All(Char.IsDigit)))
{
    int year = int.Parse(tokens[0]);
    int month = int.Parse(tokens[1]);
    int day = int.Parse(tokens[2]);
    dtPublished = new DateTime(year, month, day);
}