Question

Can anyone advise on the best way to format the following date string format…

Sat, Sep 22

to something that I can store in SQL Server as a date/time…

using format such as YYYY/MM/DD

I could do this in code, but I am reading hundreds of xml extracts not sure how best to approach this.

Answer 1

You could use DateTime.Parse() See here for info. Although, you’ll have to have a year in there somewhere.

DateTime convertedDate = DateTime.Parse("Sat, Sep 22 2012");

EDIT:

Since we’re not sure if you know what year you are dealing with, I suggest that you might use something like this:

Int32 thisYear = DateTime.Now.Year;
string aDate = "Sat, Sep 22";
DateTime outDate;
while (!DateTime.TryParse(aDate + " " + thisYear.ToString(), out outDate))        
    thisYear--;

This will get the DateTime for the most recent year that fits the description. If you try to use an aDate of “Fri, Sep 22”, then your result will be “9/22/2006”.

Or, if you just want to use ‘this year’ you could just use this:

String[] myDate = ("Fri, Sep 22").Split(',');
DateTime convertedDate = DateTime.Parse(myDate[1].ToString());