How to convert string with unusual format into datetime

Question

I\'m using .NET 3.5 and I have a date that comes in as string in the following format:

Tue Jan 20 20:47:43 GMT 2009

First questi

Answer 1

DateTime.Parse("Tue Jan 20 20:47:43 GMT 2009")

Answer 2

You could use Convert.ToDateTime

Answer 3

Try to do a DateTime.Parse("Tue Jan 20 20:47:43 GMT 2009") and see if it accepts it.

Here's a good link for custom DateTime formatting.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ffffd4.aspx

I hope that helps.

Answer 4

Try this:

DateTime.TryParse(Tue Jan 20 20:47:43 GMT 2009", out objDt);

You need to give an output value. Use If and if it returns true then its a valid date.

HTH

Answer 5

There you go

DateTime d = DateTime.ParseExact("Tue Jan 20 20:47:43 GMT 2009".Replace("GMT", "+00"), "ffffd MMM dd H:mm:ss zz yyyy", new CultureInfo("en-US"));

The DateTime API and its documentation pretty much sucks. Exceptions will only tell you that "String was not recognized as a valid DateTime", which doesn't really help. It had to figure out the date format specifiers myself because I didn't find them in MSDN.

The "en-US" locale is necessary, I guess, because your date format uses English abbreviations like "Tue".

Anyway, I can't tell you what the date format is called. It is pretty similar but not equal to a format used with HTTP (e.g. If-Modified-Since: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 13:25:25 GMT).

Answer 6

DateTime dt;
if(DateTime.TryParse("Tue Jan 20 20:47:43 GMT 2009", out dt)){
   /* Yay.. it's valid */
}

You can also use TryParseExact where you can specify the format of your DateTime

Using TryparseExact

const string FORMAT = "ffffd MMM dd HH:mm:ss \"GMT\" yyyy";
if (DateTime.TryParseExact("Tue Jan 20 20:47:43 GMT 2009", FORMAT, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal, out dt)) {
        /* is valid */
 }    

I believe that should work. Not sure if it will try to parse out the GMT though.