Question

Hi all i’ve got a complex SSIS package, however i’m hitting my head against a brick wall with a particular part. I’ve got a maintenance part that will delete files that are older than 3 months old (from today’s date). The files all have the date in the filename, for example AA-CDR-20110606030000-2-001A648E6F74-026874.xml

So i’ve written a task that will loop over all the files in a particular folder using a Foreach loop, then i have a script that will load in the filename using a variable set using the foreach loop. Then delete the file using the script below. This works fine when running in debug mode. However when trying to execute this on the server i get a failure with a “System.FormatException: String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.”. I really dont understand why, any ideas?

DateTime deleteDate = DateTime.Today.AddMonths(-3);

String file = Dts.Variables["FileName"].Value.ToString();
String fileDateString = file.Substring(42, 8);
String fileDateYear = fileDateString.Substring(0, 4);
String fileDateMonth = fileDateString.Substring(4, 2);
String fileDateDay = fileDateString.Substring(6, 2);

DateTime fileDateTime = Convert.ToDateTime(fileDateDay + "-" + fileDateMonth + "-" + fileDateYear);

if (fileDateTime < deleteDate)
{
  System.IO.File.Delete(file);
}

Answer 1

It seems that there is a file on the production server that does not follow the pattern and the date cannot be extracted from its name.

Try to use something like this:

try
{
    DateTime fileDateTime = Convert.ToDateTime(fileDateDay + "-" + fileDateMonth + "-" + fileDateYear);

    if (fileDateTime < deleteDate)
    {
        System.IO.File.Delete(file);
    }
}
catch (System.FormatException)
{
    // log the Dts.Variables["FileName"] value here to see why it could not be parsed
}