c#: DateTime.Parse() -- Unrecognized datetime-string

Question

So I got this datetime-string which I get from an external API, "2014-08-28T11:00:00:000-0400".

But I am unable to parse it into a normal DateTime object in C#, I know that last part of the string has something to do with timezone offsets or something, but I am at a loss as to what to do in order for it to parse.

What I've tried so far:

DateTime.Parse("2019-11-13T05:20:14:311-0700")
DateTime.Parse("2019-11-13T05:20:14:311-0700", new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-GB"))
DateTime.Parse("2019-11-13T05:20:14:311-0700", new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US"))
DateTimeOffset.Parse("2019-11-13T05:20:14:311-0700")

A whole other bunch of stuff where I've passed in various format strings like "yyyy-MM-dd:HH:mm:ss" but that doesn't do any good either

Please, if someone out there can help me, you'll get a virtual cookie!

Does this answer your question? [C# string to DateTime with timezone](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10293362/c-sharp-string-to-datetime-with-timezone) — Mahesh Waghmare, Nov 13 '19 at 13:39
`DateTime.ParseExact` - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8401605 - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.datetime.parseexact — Rand Random, Nov 13 '19 at 13:39
@MaheshWaghmare that doesn't do me any good either, since my datetime string does't look like: 2012-04-20T10:10:00+0200 notice the extra "000" that I have before "0400" — mpma, Nov 13 '19 at 13:45
As per @Jamiec comment. I have checked and it is working. :- `DateTimeOffset result = DateTimeOffset.ParseExact("2014-08-28T11:00:00:000-0400", "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss:fffzzz", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);` — Mahesh Waghmare, Nov 13 '19 at 13:51

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 13 '19 at 13:49

The format string you want to use is either

yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss:fffzzz

or

yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss:fffK

More information for zzz can be found here or for K here

You can use the above format string with either DateTime.ParseExact or DateTimeOffset.ParseExact depending on what you're trying to achieve.

Live example: https://rextester.com/DTNT63275

c#: DateTime.Parse() -- Unrecognized datetime-string

1 Answers1