Question

I had a string in config file, defining date time with time zone.
I am not able to get this value, while reading values from config file.

In config file:

Setting name="abcdefgh" value="2012-08-10T22:00:00-08:00"

In C#, I am reading this as follows:

 DateTime StartDate;

 StartDate = DateTime.ParseExact(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("abcdefgh"), "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss", null);
            Configuration.Instance.abcdefgh= StartDate;

In start date, i am getting 11 Aug, 2012 11:30:00, with no time zone.

I want to read it as it is. also tell, if my format of writing datetime in config file is correct

Answer 1

MSDN link to DateTimeOffset.

Use DateTimeOffset whenever you are referring to an exact point in
time. For example, use it to calculate “now”, transaction times, file
change times, logging event times, etc. If the time zone is not
known, use it with UTC. These uses are much more common than the
scenarios where DateTime is preferred, so this should be considered
the default.

var date = DateTimeOffset.Parse("2012-08-10T22:00:00-08:00");
date.Offset // -08:00:00,  offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
date.DateTime // 10/08/2012 22:00:00,