Question

Short question. I am trying to convert a string into Date (to put it later into INSERT command). My problem is that the string I am reading is always different (there is no rule what format it is going to be – as this is user-dependent).

I found such piece of code on the stackoverflow:

DateTime myDate = 
    DateTime.ParseExact("2009-05-08 14:40:52,531", 
                        "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,fff",
                        System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)

but in my case it will not work as I don’t know what kind of format I am going to import.
Is there any universal import function which checks all known formats? If now how should I write it? (please give me some hints).

Thanks for any tips and hints in advance,
Pete

Answer 1

No this is not possible however you may define possible formats in an array and pass it to ParseExact or TryParseExact method.

Dim format() As String = {"dd-MM-yy", "dd/MM/yy"}

Dim myDate As DateTime = DateTime.ParseExact("2009-05-08 14:40:52,531",format, 
                      System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture))