Parse C# string to DateTime

Question

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 d         


        

Answer 1

string iDate = "05/05/2005";
DateTime oDate = Convert.ToDateTime(iDate);
DateTime oDate = DateTime.ParseExact(iString, "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm tt",null);

DateTime Formats

Answer 2

You could use:

DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact(
                  date, 
                  "ddMMyyyyHHmm",
                  CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Answer 3

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.