Convert string to DateTime or output DateTime to string using .NET
Rob — December 1, 2010 - 20:14
I often times come across a situation where I have a string in a certain date time format and wish to convert that string into a .NET DateTime object for further manipulation. In one recent situation, a date was supplied in an XML node (without a specified data type) as a string, but the output of the date had to be in a specific format for my client.
Example: We need to convert <submit_date>2010-12-04 13:22:32</submit_date> and output it as December 4, 2010 at 1:22 PM
The trick lies within the DateTime.ParseExact() method provided by .NET. Since we know that the date string is supplied in a certain format, namely “yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss”, we can convert the supplied string into a DateTime .NET object then output in any format we wish. Refer to this page for a list of Custom Date and Time Format Strings.
Here is a console application demonstrating how we would convert the string in the above example to DateTime, then output in desired format:
using System;
using System.Text;
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string newDate = ConvertDateTimeString("2010-12-04 13:22:34",
"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss",
"{0:MMMM d, yyyy} at {0:h:mm tt}");
Console.WriteLine(newDate);
Console.ReadLine();
}
public static string ConvertDateTimeString(string dateString, string dateStringFormat, string desiredFormat)
{
string output;
try
{
DateTime MyDateTime = new DateTime();
MyDateTime = DateTime.ParseExact(dateString, dateStringFormat, null);
output = String.Format(desiredFormat, MyDateTime);
}
catch (FormatException)
{
output = String.Format("{0} is not in the correct format.", dateString);
}
return output;
}
}The above will output...
December 4, 2010 at 1:22 PM
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