Question

I receive a date-time from automation system like this: 00:00:30:00.

When I try to parse it to TimeSpan I get this error:

Input string was not in a correct format.

What kind of format can help me to convert this to TimeSpan?

Answer 1

Decent TimeSpan parsing is only available in .NET 4.0. For earlier version you can hijack the DateTime parsing methods, converting from a date to a timespan through the Ticks property. Like this:

    public static bool TryParseTime(string txt, string fmt, out TimeSpan ts) {
        DateTime dt;
        bool ok = DateTime.TryParseExact(txt, fmt, null, 
            System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.NoCurrentDateDefault, out dt);
        ts = new TimeSpan(ok ? dt.Ticks : 0);
        return ok;
    }

Additional work is required when you need to parse negative time spans.