Question

I am trying to convert a string into a DateTime and change its format from 05/06/2012 12:00:00 to 2012-06-05 12:00:00.000 to search in the database (SQL Server 2008 R2) DATETIME column type. The original date is coming from a calendar!

I tried this:

string Datereturn = row.Cells[9].Text; 

DateTime dategiven = DateTime.ParseExact(Dategiven, 
             "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss[.nnn]", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

but it pops an error of invalid datetime

Answer 1

To parse 05/06/2012 12:00:00:

DateTime dategiven = DateTime.ParseExact(Dategiven, 
         "dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

To get a different formatted string:

string newFormat = dateGive.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss");

I suggest reading Custom Date and Time Format Strings on MSDN.

Also the different between parsing and formatting (in regards to DateTime):

• Parsing means taking a string representing a datetime and getting a DateTime object from it

• Formatting a DateTime is taking a DateTime object and getting a string from it, formatted as needed.