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C# valid date

dc

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?

2 Replies

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Vulpes14y ago
Accepted 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.
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Ehtesham14y ago
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
}
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