How to validate DateTime format?

Question

I am suppose to let the user enter a DateTime format, but I need to validate it to check if it is acceptable. The user might enter \"yyyy-MM-dd\" and it would be fine, but t

Answer 1

I assume you want to know if the specified format string is valid...

For this you could round-trip it:

private bool IsValidDateFormat(string dateFormat)
{
    try
    {
        String dts=DateTime.Now.ToString(dateFormat, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
        DateTime.ParseExact(dts, dateFormat, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
        return true;
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
        return false;
    }
}