Question

With SQL-server 2008 database I have a char(14) data type that I want to convert to a datetime.

Example char(14) values:

20120209102026
20010131120000

The date format is yyyymmdd of some sort.

It seems like the values I posted are not the only format, because I get an “index out of range” error for some of the values. For this I can skip the ones that are not valid dates.

Answer 1

declare @c char(14)
select @c='20120209102026'

Select Cast(Substring(@c,1,8) + ' ' + Substring(@c,9,2)+':'+ 
    Substring(@c,11,2)+':'+ Substring(@c,13,2) as DateTime)

Second Version that ignores out of range numeric values:

Select Cast( 
Rtrim(Substring(@c,1,8) 
+ Case When len(Substring(@c,9,4))>=4 then +' '+ Substring(@c,9,2) else '' end
+ Case When len(Substring(@c,11,2))=2 then +':'+ Substring(@c,11,2) else '' end
+ Case When len(Substring(@c,13,2))=2 then +':'+ Substring(@c,13,2) else '' end)
as Datetime)