How to create a NET DateTime from ISO 8601 format

Question

I ve found how to turn a DateTime into an ISO 8601 format  but nothing on how to do the reverse in C    I have 2010-08-20T15 00 00Z  and I want to turn it into a DateTime object   I could separate the parts of the string myself  but that seems like a lot of work for something that is already an international standard

User · Answer

Here is one that works better for me  LINQPad version    DateTime d  DateTime TryParseExact       2010-08-20T15 00 00Z         yyyy-MM-dd THH mm ss Z       CultureInfo InvariantCulture      DateTimeStyles AssumeUniversal       out d   d ToString     produces  true 8 20 2010 8 00 00 AM

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using System Globalization   DateTime d  DateTime TryParseExact       2010-08-20T15 00 00        s       CultureInfo InvariantCulture      DateTimeStyles AssumeUniversal  out d

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Although MSDN says that  s  and  o  formats reflect the standard  they seem to be able to parse only a limited subset of it  Especially it is a problem if the string contains time zone specification   Neither it does for basic ISO8601 formats  or reduced precision formats - however this is not exactly your case   That is why I make use of custom format strings when it comes to parsing ISO8601  Currently my preferred snippet is   static readonly string   formats             Basic formats      yyyyMMddTHHmmsszzz        yyyyMMddTHHmmsszz        yyyyMMddTHHmmssZ          Extended formats      yyyy-MM-ddTHH mm sszzz        yyyy-MM-ddTHH mm sszz        yyyy-MM-ddTHH mm ssZ          All of the above with reduced accuracy      yyyyMMddTHHmmzzz        yyyyMMddTHHmmzz        yyyyMMddTHHmmZ        yyyy-MM-ddTHH mmzzz        yyyy-MM-ddTHH mmzz        yyyy-MM-ddTHH mmZ          Accuracy reduced to hours      yyyyMMddTHHzzz        yyyyMMddTHHzz        yyyyMMddTHHZ        yyyy-MM-ddTHHzzz        yyyy-MM-ddTHHzz        yyyy-MM-ddTHHZ          public static DateTime ParseISO8601String   string str         return DateTime ParseExact   str  formats           CultureInfo InvariantCulture  DateTimeStyles None        If you don t mind parsing TZ-less strings  I do   you can add an  s  line to greatly extend the number of covered format alterations

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This solution makes use of the DateTimeStyles enumeration  and it also works with Z   DateTime d2   DateTime Parse  2010-08-20T15 00 00Z   null  System Globalization DateTimeStyles RoundtripKind     This prints the solution perfectly

User · Answer

It seems important to exactly match the format of the ISO string for TryParseExact to work  I guess Exact is Exact and this answer is obvious to most but anyway     In my case  Reb Cabin s answer doesn t work as I have a slightly different input as per my  value  below   Value  2012-08-10T14 00 00 000Z  There are some extra 000 s in there for milliseconds and there may be more   However if I add some  fff to the format as shown below  all is fine   Format String    yyyy-MM-dd THH mm ss fff Z   In VS2010 Immediate Window   DateTime TryParseExact value   yyyy-MM-dd THH mm ss fff Z   CultureInfo InvariantCulture DateTimeStyles AssumeUniversal  out d     true   You may have to use DateTimeStyles AssumeLocal as well depending upon what zone your time is for

User · Answer

DateTime ParseExact      allows you to tell the parser what each character represents

User · Answer

This works fine in LINQPad4   Console WriteLine DateTime Parse  2010-08-20T15 00 00Z     Console WriteLine DateTime Parse  2010-08-20T15 00 00     Console WriteLine DateTime Parse  2010-08-20 15 00 00

[c#] How to create a .NET DateTime from ISO 8601 format

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