Question

I know that C# has some great date conversion tools. What I’m I’m wondering is if I can automatically convert this string to a date object:

"Fri May 11 00:00:00 EDT 2012"

I’m thinking I’ll have to manually parse the month, day, and year but I’m hoping there is an easier way built-in. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use DateTime.ParseExact or DateTime.TryPraseExact to provide a custom format:

DateTime result;
if (!DateTime.TryParseExact(
        "Fri May 11 00:00:00 EDT 2012", 
        "ddd MMM dd HH:mm:ss EDT yyyy", 
        CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, 
        DateTimeStyles.None, 
        out result)) {
    // handle invalid date
}

All of the format options are listed on the Custom Date and Time Format Strings page on MSDN.