How to parse the IIS response header "Date" in .NET

Question

Hello, I'm performing an HttpWebRequest against an IIS server. One of the response headers is Date, which I'd like to parse. This is its value:

"Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:16:13 GMT"

How do I parase this string? DateTime.Parse didn't quite work out well for me.

Thanks!

Answer 1

use DateTime.TryParse

var d = "Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:16:13 GMT";
DateTime dt;
var b = DateTime.TryParse(d, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.DateTimeFormat, 
    DateTimeStyles.None, out dt);
Console.WriteLine(dt);

Outputs:

11-10-2009 01:46:13

Note: the time is little off the mark, I think it is being converted to local time.

Answer 2

You can use DateTime.ParseExact to specify the exact format you are attempting to parse. Without testing, it looks like you'll need:

DateTime.ParseExact(input, "ddd, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss K");

Or, if the GMT gives you trouble, use the DateTimeStyles overload of ParseExact:

DateTime.ParseExact(input, "ddd, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss 'GMT'", 
    CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.DateTimeFormat, DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal);