I am trying to convert a string value to a datetime value but am getting a System.FormatException error. This is because of the timezone info which is part of the date string. Is there any method which will be able to handle this conversion?
string date = "Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:18:00 EST";
DateTime dt = Convert.ToDateTime(date);
Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString());
I don't believe there's any custom date and time format string which will parse or format a time zone abbreviation. You'll have to strip it out, parse the local part, work out which time zone is meant from the abbreviation (good luck with that - they're ambiguous) and then apply that time zone to the local time to get a UTC value (again, this can be ambiguous).
If you're in control of the format at all, I would try to avoid including time zone information if you can, or include an offset rather than a time zone if that's all that's important (an offset doesn't give the same information of course), or an unambiguous time zone identifier if you really need the time zone. Note that .NET uses the Windows system time zone identifiers; my own Noda Time project uses the more widespread Olson / zoneinfo / tz identifiers, if that's helpful to you.
Related
In c#, I do this
DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy-dd-M--HH-mm-ss")
but it gets me the server time. However I also have the offset in this format for example "-04:00". How can I combine the offset to get the local time?
Thanks
If you mean that you want to get the server's system local time including offset, then use the DateTimeOffset.Now property. Then format it as desired.
DateTimeOffset.Now.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss zzz")
The zzz specifier produces the offset as a string in the ISO 8601 extended format, that you asked for.
If what you mean is you have a UTC offset from elsewhere and you want to apply it to the current UTC time from the server, then do the following instead:
TimeSpan offset = TimeSpan.Parse("-04:00");
DateTimeOffset now = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow.ToOffset(offset);
string result = now.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss zzz");
This takes the current server time, and applies the ToOffset function to adjust to the offset you provided.
Do keep in mind though that an offset is not the same as a time zone. The offset you have might be the one for the current date and time, or it might be for some other date and time in that time zone. For example, US Eastern Time is UTC-4 during daylight saving time, but UTC-5 during standard time. See "Time Zone != Offset" in the timezone tag wiki.
This worked.
DateTime.UtcNow.AddHours(DateTimeOffset.Parse("01/01/0001 00:00:00 -04:00").Offset.TotalHours).ToString("yyyy-dd-M--HH-mm-ss")
This should work
DateTime.UtcNow.AddHours(DateTimeOffset.Parse("01/01/0001 00:00:00 -04:00").Offset.TotalHours).ToString("yyyy-dd-M--HH-mm-ss",CultureInfo. InvariantCulture);
Need to add the directive
using System.Globalization;
I'm converting the UTC time, taken from my local Server time to Central standard time. I have this running on a server in Germany.
Converting the time and date works, but when a library i have converts it to a string it has a wrong Timezone offset.
It comes out as 2019-05-11T14:44:09+02:00
when i need it to be 2019-05-11T14:44:09-06:00
TimeZoneInfo CRtimezone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Central Standard Time");
TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeFromUtc(DateTime.UtcNow, CRtimezone);
The +02:00 is the UTCoffset for Germany, which i don't want, even the the time and date are correctly in Central Time.
Is there a way to pass or include the offset in the DateTime object?
Is there a way to pass or include the offset in the DateTime object?
No, DateTime structure does not have UTC Offset but DateTimeOffset has. If you really wanna keep your UTC Offset value in your code, I suggest you to work with DateTimeOffset instead of DateTime.
Since it doesn't keep UTC Offset value, when you get it's textual (aka string) representation, you still get the offset value of your server in Germany (includes K, z, zz and zzz specifiers by the way). TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeFromUtc method returns a DateTime instance, the offset value you might wanna represent depends on how you want to show it.
One option might be that you might wanna concatenate The Sortable ("s") Format Specifier representation of your DateTime and your TimeZoneInfo.BaseUtcOffset value.
TimeZoneInfo CRtimezone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Central Standard Time");
$"{TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeFromUtc(DateTime.UtcNow, CRtimezone).ToString("s")}{CRtimezone.BaseUtcOffset}".Dump();
My web service call to a third party applications returns the date,time zone and timezone_offset values. I need to add this to a calendar in Asp.net application. What is the best way to combine this together so that my date object understands that its from Eastern time zone?
<start_date>2014-11-17 19:00:00</start_date>
<timezone>America/New_York</timezone>
<timezone_offset>GMT-0500</timezone_offset>
Since you have the offset too, you can use DateTimeOffset.Parse() to get the DateTimeOffset. From there, you can read the DateTime property. The output dt variable will have 2014-11-17 7:00:00 PM with DateTimeKind property set to "Unspecified"
var dtOffset = DateTimeOffset.Parse("2014-11-17 19:00:00-0500", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
var dt = dtOffset.DateTime;
A DateTimeOffset represents a point in time. Usually, its relative to UTC. So, it is a natural structure to initially parse the fields that you have.
If you want a reference to the same datetime in UTC, you can use this. Here the output dt variable will have 2014-11-18 12:00:00 AM with DateTimeKind property set to "Utc"
var dt = DateTime.Parse("2014-11-17 19:00:00-0500", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture).ToUniversalTime();
If you don't have the offset but just have the timeZoneId, you can still do it but you need NodaTime for that.
I'll focus on this part of the question:
What is the best way to combine this together so that my date object understands that its from Eastern time zone?
There is no data type built in to .NET that can sufficiently do that. The DateTimeOffset type associates with a particular offset, such as the -05:00 or -04:00 that might be in use by the Eastern time zone (depending on the date). But those same offsets might also be sourced from some other time zone entirely. A time zone has one or more offsets, but an offset isn't a time zone itself.
Fortunately there are solutions. There are two options to consider:
You could pair a DateTimeOffset with a TimeZoneInfo object. When storing or transmitting these, you would only send the full DateTimeOffset along with the Id of the time zone.
The Noda Time library is a much more effective way to work with date and time, especially when it comes to time zone concerns. It contains a type called ZonedDateTime that already combines a date, time, offset, and time zone. It can also be used to work with IANA time zone identifiers, such as the "America/New_York" time zone you specified in the question.
I had a string in config file, defining date time with time zone.
I am not able to get this value, while reading values from config file.
In config file:
Setting name="abcdefgh" value="2012-08-10T22:00:00-08:00"
In C#, I am reading this as follows:
DateTime StartDate;
StartDate = DateTime.ParseExact(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("abcdefgh"), "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss", null);
Configuration.Instance.abcdefgh= StartDate;
In start date, i am getting 11 Aug, 2012 11:30:00, with no time zone.
I want to read it as it is. also tell, if my format of writing datetime in config file is correct
MSDN link to DateTimeOffset.
Use DateTimeOffset whenever you are referring to an exact point in
time. For example, use it to calculate "now", transaction times, file
change times, logging event times, etc. If the time zone is not
known, use it with UTC. These uses are much more common than the
scenarios where DateTime is preferred, so this should be considered
the default.
var date = DateTimeOffset.Parse("2012-08-10T22:00:00-08:00");
date.Offset // -08:00:00, offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
date.DateTime // 10/08/2012 22:00:00,
DateTime doesn't keep information about timezone. To parse the string and keep information about timezone - you should use DateTimeOffset structure.
Use the DateTimeOffset structure (and DateTimeOffset.ParseExact) if you want to store timezone information.
Your ParseExact format also doesn't quite match the setting value: it should have a zz at the end for the timezone information. You can also use DateTimeOffset.Parse since your setting string is in a standard format.
It's a standard format, so the ParseExact isn't needed, try:
StartDate = DateTime.Parse(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("abcdefgh"));
I substituted the hard-coded value you provided and got the correct result for my timezone (GMT-4) as
8/11/2012 2:00 AM
Note: as others mentioned, the timezone is not retained, so you will get the correct localized time corresponding to whatever timezone information was in the string, but you won't be able to find out what timezone that was. The DateTime.Kind property will reflect that it's a local time.
I get date data from a user. That data is a date (e.g. 4/23/2011) and an hour (0 - 23), representing the time. This date/time that the user selects is a local time.
I need to convert this to a UTC DateTime. I have their GMTOffset for their location. How can I do this?
You should work with the DateTimeOffset structure, specifically, the constructor that takes the DateTime and the TimeSpan that represents the offset.
From there, conversions to/from UTC are a breeze, as the offset is embedded in the structure and not dependent on local system settings.
Note, even though not commonly adhered to, it is recommended to work with DateTimeOffset most of the time, as opposed to DateTime (see the note under the section titled "The DateTimeOffset Structure").
var utcDateTime =
new DateTimeOffset(userDateTime, TimeSpan.FromHours(userUtcOffset)).UtcDateTime;
Of course you can use TimeSpan differently if the GMT offset has minutes / fractions of an hour.
Just use the DateTime.ToUniversalTime in C#, will that do what you want?