C# valid date

Question

In a C# 2008 application I am obtaining a data from a web service via an xml file. In some instance a field is not a must not be a valid datetime value for a sql server 2008 r2 database. Thus can you tell me: 1. what check I can do to make certain the value is in a valid date time format? 2. Also can you tell me how to convert the value to a valid datetime format?

Vulpes · Answer

Well a Date format which should always work in SQL Server regardless of what culture you or the server are in is the ISO standard 'yyyy-mm-dd' or if a time component is needed 'yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss'. The 'T' in the latter just separates the date from the time. To get these formats (as strings) in C# you can do: DateTime dt = DateTime.Now; // or whatever string date = dt.ToString(yyyy-MM-dd); string dateTime = dt.ToString(yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss); So I'd suggest you use one of these.

Ehtesham · Answer

You can check if date is valid depending on certain date format using the below code DateTime date; string dateformat = dd/MM/yyyy; if (DateTime.TryParseExact(29/01/2012 dateformat null System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.None out date)) { //Valid date } else { //invalid }