Parse C# string to DateTime
I have a string like this: 250920111414
I want to create a DateTime object from that string. As of now, I use substring and do it like this:
string date = 250920111414;
int year = Convert.ToInt32(date.Substring(4, 4));
int month = Convert.ToInt32(date.Substring(2, 2));
...
DateTime dt = new DateTime(year, month, day ...);
Is it possible to use string format, to do the same, without substring?
Absolutely. Guessing the format from your string, you can use ParseExact
string format = "ddMMyyyyHHmm";
DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact(value, format, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
or TryParseExact
:
DateTime dt;
bool success = DateTime.TryParseExact(value, format,
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, DateTimeStyles.None, out dt);
The latter call will simply return false
on parse failure, instead of throwing an exception - if you may have bad data which shouldn't cause the overall task to fail (e.g. it's user input, and you just want to prompt them) then this is a better call to use.
EDIT: For more details about the format string details, see "Custom Date and Time Format Strings" in MSDN.
You could use:
DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact(
date,
"ddMMyyyyHHmm",
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);