Convert 24-hour String to DateTime

Question

I have a string containing the date and time

string startDate = "30-09-2022 09:00:00";
DateTime startdate = DateTime.ParseExact(startDate, 
                                        "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss", 
                                        CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

I want to convert to DateTime, but it doesn't work and the error message is:

System.FormatException: String '30-09-2022 09:00:00' was not recognized as a valid DateTime

How to solve it?

Note: the string is in 24-hour format

lets take a closer look at `30-09-2022` and `dd/MM/yyyy` parts — Iłya Bursov, Sep 30 '22 at 03:25
Does this answer your question? [Convert string to Date in java](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9945072/convert-string-to-date-in-java) — pringi, Sep 30 '22 at 09:51

Joel Coehoorn · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-30T14:01:52.393

The "Exact" in ParseExact() means it... your format string much match the data perfectly. For example, you can't use / if the data has -.

DateTime startdate = DateTime.ParseExact(startDate, "dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

The exception is / is actually a special placeholder for the date separator defined in the current culture. Here we're using the invariant culture, so this could work if and only if - is also set as the date separator for that culture (hint: it's not).

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 30 '22 at 05:22

Your date string has '-' between the date elements and your format string has '/' slashes. This is not an exact parse.

string startDate = "30-09-2022 09:00:00";
DateTime startdate = DateTime.ParseExact(startDate, "dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

or

string startDate = "30/09/2022 09:00:00";
DateTime startdate = DateTime.ParseExact(startDate, "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Convert 24-hour String to DateTime

2 Answers2