how to fix 'The field must be a date' on a datetime property in mvc

Question

I need to capture date and time both for my model property. In my model class I have the following

[Required]
[DataType(DataType.DateTime)]
public DateTime?          


        

Answer 1

You need to make sure your application's Culture is properly set.

Example

The following example shows how cultures affect date parsing: https://dotnetfiddle.net/vXQTAZ

DateTime dateValue;
string dateString = "28/05/2015 15:55";

if (DateTime.TryParse(dateString, CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("en-US"), DateTimeStyles.None, out dateValue))
{
    Console.WriteLine("Valid en-US date.");
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("Not a valid en-US date.");
}

if (DateTime.TryParse(dateString, CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("fr-FR"), DateTimeStyles.None, out dateValue))
{
    Console.WriteLine("Valid fr-FR date.");
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("Not a valid fr-FR date.");
}

Output

Not a valid en-US date.

Valid fr-FR date.

Client Side Settings

You may also need to make sure that your client side validators are using properly cultures/globalization. If you are using jQuery validate plugin with MVC, see this extension to help modify that plugin to meet your needs: http://blog.icanmakethiswork.io/2012/09/globalize-and-jquery-validate.html