Develop Reference

How to parse default git date format in C#

How do you parse the default git format to a DateTime in C#?
As per What is the format for --date parameter of git commit
The default date format from git looks like Mon Jul 3 17:18:43 2006 +0200.
Right now I don't have control over the output, this strings comes from another tool that printed the date and I need to parse it.

I wouldn't parse this to DateTime, I would parse it to DateTimeOffset since it has a UTC offset value inside of it.
Why? Because if you parse it to DateTime, you will get a DateTime as Local and it might generate different results for different machines since they can have timezone offsets of that time.
For example, I'm in Istanbul and we use Eastern European Time which use UTC+02:00. If I run the example of your code with ParseExact method, I will get the 07/03/2006 18:18:43 as a Local time.
Why? Because in 3 July 2006, my timezone was in a daylight saving time which is UTC+03:00. That's why it generates 1 hour forwarded result. That's the part makes it ambiguous when you parse it to DateTime.
string s = "Mon Jul 3 17:18:43 2006 +0200";
DateTimeOffset dto;
if (DateTimeOffset.TryParseExact(s, "ddd MMM d HH:mm:ss yyyy K",
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
DateTimeStyles.None, out dto))
{
Console.WriteLine(dto);
}
Now, you have a DateTimeOffset as 07/03/2006 17:18:43 +02:00. You can still get the DateTime part with it's .DateTime property but it's Kind will be Unspecified in that case.
But of course, I suggest to use Noda Time instead which can solve most of the DateTime weirdness.

So far the best format string I found is ddd MMM d HH:mm:ss yyyy K.
DateTime date;
DateTime.TryParseExact(
gitDateString,
"ddd MMM d HH:mm:ss yyyy K",
System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.None,
out date
);

DateTime Converted to Invalid Format

I tried converting 9/29/2013 2:44:28 PM (mm/dd/yyyy) to dd/mm/yyyy format.
I got a strange Date after Converting.
I tried
dateTimeVar.ToString("dd/mm/yyyy");
29/44/2013
The Date was a type of DateTime itself.

Lowercase mm means minutes, try this instead:
dateTimeVar.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy");
However, if this works depends on your local culture. If your current culture's date separator is different, / will be replaced with that. So if you want to enforce it use CultureInfo.InvariantCulture:
dateTimeVar.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

MM is for months, mm is for minutes. That's why it gets your minutes (which is 44) instead of your month value.
Use it like;
dateTimeVar.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy");
Check out;
The "MM" Custom Format Specifier
The "mm" Custom Format Specifier
And remember, / has special meaning when you use it as a date separator. It replace itself with your current culture date separator. Forcing to use with InvariantCulture would be better.
dateTimeVar.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Take a look at;
The "/" Custom Format Specifier
What if I want to convert a string in dd/MM/yyyy to DateTime?
Then you can use DateTime.ParseExact method.
Converts the specified string representation of a date and time to its
DateTime equivalent using the specified format and culture-specific
format information. The format of the string representation must match
the specified format exactly.
As an example;
string s = "01/01/2013";
DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact(s, "dd/MM/yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Console.WriteLine(dt);
Output will be;
1/1/2013 12:00:00 AM
Here a DEMO.

dateTimeVar.ToString("dd/mm/yyyy"); // Change to dd/MM/yyyy
The problem is mm stands for minute and you need MM which would be months

Tim's answer is correct, but to remove the format string altogether you can use. 'ToShortDateString'
DateTime date = DateTime.Today;
var stringDate = date.ToShortDateString();
var stringDate2 = date.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy");

How to parse a string into a date time format in C#

i have a string which contains date time this...
string S="08/18/2013 24:00:00"
DateTime DT = DateTime.ParseExact(S, "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss", null);
i want to parse it into date time but shows an exception like this.
The DateTime represented by the string is not supported in calendar System.Globalization.GregorianCalendar.
please tell me any solution for this problem.

The problem is with the hour being 24. DateTime doesn't support this, as far as I'm aware.
Options:
Use my Noda Time project which does support 24:00:00, but basically handles it by adding a day (it doesn't preserve a difference between that and "end of previous day")
Keep using DateTime, manually replace "24:00:00" with "00:00:00" when it occurs, and remember to add a day afterwards
If you want to preserve the information that it was actually "end of the day" you'd need to do that separately, and keep the information alongside the DateTime / LocalDateTime.
You should also parse with the invariant culture as other answers have suggested - you're not trying to parse a culture-specific string; you know the exact separators etc.

string S="08/18/2013 00:00:00"; // here is the first problem occurred
DateTime DT = DateTime.ParseExact(S, "MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

From The "HH" Custom Format Specifier
The "HH" custom format specifier (plus any number of additional "H"
specifiers) represents the hour as a number from 00 through 23; that
is, the hour is represented by a zero-based 24-hour clock that counts
the hours since midnight.
So, using 24 as an hour is invalid on this case.
Try with hh format with 00 instead like;
string S = "08/18/2013 00:00:00";
DateTime DT = DateTime.ParseExact(S, "MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Here a DEMO.
If you really want to use 24:00:00 as a hour, take a look Noda Time which developed by Jon.

Human readable date to DateTime [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
DateTime Conversion and Parsing DateTime.Now.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss.fff")
(3 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I need to convert from a "human readable" date format to DateTime, for example:
From: January 20, 2013
To: MM/dd/yyyy
Does anybody know what's the format or if there's one for doing this with DateTime.Parse and providing the format? I just want to check before jumping into a date parser.

Custom Date and Time Format Strings
MMMM dd, yyyy is a format string you're looking for.
Use DateTime.ParseExact or DateTime.TryParseExact to parse the datetime using specific format string.
After parsing you'll be able to print the value in format you want:
string input = "20, 2013";
DateTime value;
if (DateTime.TryParseExact(input, "dd, yyyy", CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, DateTimeStyles.None, out value))
{
string output = value.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy");
}

I'm not quite sure your goal, but are you trying to format your DateTime based upon which MM/dd/yyyy format that you choose?
If you are you would simply do:
DateTime.Now.ToString(MM/dd/yyy);
DateTime.Now.ToString(MMMM, MM dd, yyyy);
DateTime.Now.ToString(MMMM, MM dd, yyyy hh:mm:ss);
Essentially you have to use these:
Capital MM : Represents the Month, so MMMM (Also creates the Long Date).
Lowercase d : Will represent the day.
Lowercase y: Will represent the year.
Then the hh:mm:ss will actually add an hour, minute, second.
You can also utilize Parse to also ensure it is correctly captured.
Essentially you can easily manage or alter the Format based on whatever you require. MSDN has some great articles on this as well.
Hopefully that helps. Looks like while I was posting a few answers got generated. So your going to get some solid feedback.

Troubles parsing DateTime from string

I am currently trying to parse a string that is obtained from an xml that is downloaded from the web every few minutes. The string looks like this:
Thu Jul 12 08:39:56 GMT+0100 2012
At first I just did a string.split and took out everything after the time (GMT+0100 2012) and inserted 2012 after the date.
This worked great until the date changed to:
Thu Jul 12 08:39:56 GMT+0000 2012
So I would like to dynamically pasre the GMT+ whatever as they send me that string in c#.
Any advice would be appreciated.

You can use DateTime.ParseExact with a custom date and time format string:
DateTime.ParseExact("Thu Jul 12 08:39:56 GMT+0000 2012",
"ddd MMM dd hh:mm:ss 'GMT'K yyyy",
CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)
This will throw a format exception if the string and format string do not match exactly, so you may want to use DateTime.TryParseExact that will return a false if it fails.
Instead of DateTime you may want to use DateTimeOffset that preserved timezone information , as #Keith commented - this may be important to your application.

Two things you can do: First, you should be able to use a custom format string with a ParseExact method, either from DateTime or DateTimeOffset (I would use DateTimeOffset if the actual time zone of the stamp is important, and not just the equivalent time in UTC or your local time zone).
Have a look: DateTime custom format string
The format string would probably be something like #"ddd MMM dd HH:mm:ss 'GMT'zzzz yyyy".
However, there's one snag; the .NET time zone offset ("zzzz" or simply "K") always includes a colon between the hour and minute when expressed as a string, which your input strings do not have. There is no way I know of to specify that the time zone offset doesn't/shouldn't have this colon, and I'm pretty sure that trying to parse it without a colon would cause an error.
The simplest workaround is to remove that specific colon from the string prior to parsing it. The code for that given your input is simply to remove the last colon character in the string:
var updatedString = inputString.Remove(inputString.LastIndexOf(':'), 1);

Try DateTime.Parse method to parse your date.

This should work:
XmlConvert.ToDateTime(textBox1.Text, "ddd MMM dd HH:mm:ss 'GMT'zzzz yyyy");