Question

I have been looking around the web to find an example that will solve my issue with string convertion to datetime.

I would like to convert en-us (mm/dd/yyyy) to dutch belgium (dd/mm/yyyy) datetime.
Could you please give me a working example?

For your information, I have tried Convert.ToDateTime, Parse, TryParse, ParseExact etc, but none was working. I really like an example that will make this conversion, no futile links.

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Upate

The error I get is: String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.
What I have tried:

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string str = "02/20/2012";
DateTime dt = Convert.ToDateTime(str);
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IFormatProvider theCultureInfo = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("nl-BE", true);
DateTime theDateTime = DateTime.ParseExact(deliveryDate, "dd/mm/yyyy", theCultureInfo);
Console.WriteLine(dt);
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var parsed = DateTime.ParseExact("02/20/2012","dd/mm/yyyy", null);
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dateValue = DateTime.Parse(dateString, new CultureInfo("nl-BE", false));

and some other examples which I don’t remember them now. But all leading no where.

Answer 1

Use these method overloads:

• DateTime.Parse(string, IFormatProvider)
• DateTime.ToString(IFormatProvider)

and pass a CultureInfo.DateTimeFormat to them:

string enUsDateString = "12/31/2012";
IFormatProvider enUsDateFormat = new CultureInfo("en-US").DateTimeFormat;

DateTime date = DateTime.Parse(enUsDateString, enUsDateFormat);

IFormatProvider nlBeDateFormat = new CultureInfo("nl-BE").DateTimeFormat;
string nlBeDateString = date.ToString(nlBeDateFormat);

This will, however, also include the time component in the output. If you don’t want that, try e.g.:

IFormatProvider nlBeDateFormat = new CultureInfo(…).DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern;
//                                                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^