Question

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Parse DateTime with timezone of form PST/CEST/UTC/etc

OK, I have following code in Java that converts my Date object into String:

SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss zzz");
String str = dateFormat.format(new Date());
// outputs: 2012-12-17 15:44:57 CST

I am sending that String over the wire to WebService written in C#. So, how would I parse back that String into valid DateTime considering that following doesn’t work because zzz in C# is different:

DateTime.ParseExact(parts[2], "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss zzz", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.DateTimeFormat);

And before anyone suggests it – I know I can go with UTC time, but I need to do it this way.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

CST is not a valid .NET timezone identifier.

In .NET, these are all numeric offsets – +0700, -0500 etc…

You will need to output a numeric timezone offset if you want it to be parsed by .NET.

I suggest using yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss Z in Java, as can be seen here.

The alternative is to convert CST to -0600 using string.Replace, but this is both not scalable and can fall over with the ambiguities of named timezones (CST can mean different timezones depending on where you are).