Question

2/22/2012 3:30:00

Surely that is an acceptable format to be converted to DateTime using Convert.ToDateTime()?

Answer 1

I would personally avoid using Convert.ToDateTime. I generally prefer¹ to use DateTime.TryParseExact, specifying the culture and format string you expect – assuming you have an expected format, of course. If you don’t, you have to ask yourself bigger questions.

For example:

DateTime value;
if (DateTime.TryParseExact(text, "M/d/yyyy H:mm:ss",
                           CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
                           DateTimeStyles.None,
                           out value))
{
    Console.WriteLine("Parsed to {0}", value);
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("Failed to parse");
}

That’s a slightly odd format to start with – normally a 24-hour format would include a leading 0 for the hour, and a 12-hour format would include an am/pm designator.

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¹ Well, I prefer to use Noda Time, but that’s a different matter…