Parsing a strangely formatted DateTime. Anyone fancy stepping up?

Question

Hi folks,

I'm trying to parse a datestamp (that I got from Twitter) but am receiving errors. here's the datestamp:

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:00:07 +0000

Here's my code:

DateTime.ParseExact(MyDateValue, "ddd, dd MMM YYYY HH:mm:ss +ffff", new CultureInfo("en-US"))

and here's my error:

System.FormatException was unhandled Message=String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.

Anyone fancy taking that on? To make it easy I've provided the code below for a console app that exhibits the problem.

Thanks Jamie

using System;
using System.Globalization;

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        string MyDateValue = "Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:00:07 +0000";
        var dt = DateTime.ParseExact(MyDateValue, "ddd, dd MMM YYYY HH:mm:ss +ffff", new CultureInfo("en-US"));

    }
}

Answer 1

Should your YYYY be yyyy?

My help file for the custom formatting information for DateTime only has lowercase y's, no uppercase.

Answer 2

The year specifier is yyyy, not YYYY:

string MyDateValue = "Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:00:07 +0000";
var dt = DateTime.ParseExact(MyDateValue, "ddd, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss +ffff", new CultureInfo("en-US"));

The above works fine, as far as that it will not throw an exception.

I am assuming that the +0000 at the end of the string is supposed to be a timezone specifier. If so, the ffff is incorrect, as it stands for The hundred thousandths of a second, not the timezone specifier, which is K. If it is indeed supposed to be the timezone specifier, then this would be the correct code:

string MyDateValue = "Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:00:07 +0000";
var dt = DateTime.ParseExact(MyDateValue, "ddd, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss K", new CultureInfo("en-US"));

See Custom Date and Time Format Strings.

Answer 3

Notice the change in year: YYYY->yyyy

DateTime.ParseExact(MyDateValue, "ddd, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss +ffff", new CultureInfo("en-US"))

Answer 4

I dropped the "+0000" and just used DateTime.Parse()

To get to my actual timezone (since +0000 is probably an offset from GMT) I set that as well.

string myDateValue = "Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:00:07"; //get this using substring
int gmtOffset = -6; //I'm in the Central TimeZone
DateTime dt = DateTime.Parse(myDateValue);
dt.AddHours(gmtOffset);

Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("ddd, dd MMM yyyy hh:mm:ss"));

Answer 5

System.DateTime.ParseExact(MyDateValue, "ddd, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss zzz", new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US"));

Answer 6

The year part needs to be lower-case: ddd, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss +ffff