Question

I need to parse dates and times from strings. The Problem is that the strings can have any possible format. But I also get the format strings.

So i get:

Date = "9/15/2010"
Time = "16:12:45"
DateFormat = "M/dd/yyyy"
TimeFormat = "h:mm:ss"
TimeZone = "+2:00:00"  // +/- and time in TimeFormat

But i have some problems parsing these strings.

I can’t parse the time

DateTime.ParseExact("16:12:45","h:mm:ss",null,DateTimeStyles.None);

does not work and causes a FormatException. What is wrong with this call?

If the DateFormat contains slashes, i need to escape them @"M\/dd\/yyyy". Are there any other chars that would need escaping?

Can i parse the whole DateTime in one? Somehting like:

DateTime.ParseExact(Date+' '+Time+' '+TimeZone,DateFormat+' '+TimeFormat+' +'+TimeFormat,null,DateTimeStyles.None);

Answer 1

What is wrong with this call?

The “h:mm:ss” format string expects the hours element to be in 12-hour format (h); The hours in your string are in 24-hour format so you need to use H instead:

DateTime.ParseExact("16:12:45", "H:mm:ss", null, DateTimeStyles.None);

Are there any other chars that would need escaping?

Any literal character in your string that clashes with a format specifier will need to be escaped. For example, / is the date separator but \/ means the literal / character; : is the time separator but \: means the literal : character; y is one of the year specifiers but \y is the literal y character.

Can i parse the whole DateTime in one?

Yes.