Converting string to date time

[eric.goforth]

Hello,

I'm trying to convert a string to a date time in a C# web service.

I'm passing in a string parameter and I have a localization setting in
my Web.config file:

My app is blowing up on the first line here, with a"Value does not fall
within the expected range" error.

CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo("en-US",true);
ci.DateTimeForm at.ShortDatePat tern =
ConfigurationSe ttings.AppSetti ngs["DateFormat "];

try
{
DateTime myStartDate = DateTime.Parse( startDate, ci);
}

Any idea what's wrong? Is there a simpler way to do this?

-Eric

[eric.goforth]

I'm getting past the line that was blowing up before, apparently some
weird character in there. I copied the line of code off a website and
changed it to my "en-US", maybe there was some kind of weird character
in there. I tried to copy and paste through notepad to filter them
out, but it didn't help. Usually that will work to get plain text for,
say, Word documents. Now I'm getting a "Could not determine the order
of year, month, and date from dd.mm.yy. When I try to DateTime.Parse.
All this culture info stuff seems nice if your customers use the
default date format for their culture, but the old-fashioned Format
seems much easier for customization.

-Eric

using System;
using System.Globaliz ation;

class Test
{
static void Main()
{
String stringDate = "01.01.06";
DateTime myStartDate;

CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo("en-US",true);
ci.DateTimeForm at.ShortDatePat tern = "dd.mm.yy";

myStartDate = DateTime.Parse( stringDate, ci);

Console.WriteLi ne("Successful. ");

}

}

[eric.goforth]

Got it MM = month, mm = minutes.

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

er**********@gm ail.com wrote:

I'm getting past the line that was blowing up before, apparently some
weird character in there. I copied the line of code off a website and
changed it to my "en-US", maybe there was some kind of weird character
in there. I tried to copy and paste through notepad to filter them
out, but it didn't help. Usually that will work to get plain text for,
say, Word documents. Now I'm getting a "Could not determine the order
of year, month, and date from dd.mm.yy. When I try to DateTime.Parse.
All this culture info stuff seems nice if your customers use the
default date format for their culture, but the old-fashioned Format
seems much easier for customization.

If you need to parse a specific format, look at DateTime.ParseE xact and
specify the format string yourself. You still need to give a culture
info, but in many cases the format string can be culture-insensitive
anyway.

Jon

[Vear]

I found that when I'm sending a query or inserting a record that has a date
which I grab from a textbox i've had to do the followin

"#" & datetextbox & "#"

I was getting the same error, SQL likes the pound signs on each end of the
date.

John
"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" wrote:

er**********@gm ail.com wrote:

I'm getting past the line that was blowing up before, apparently some
weird character in there. I copied the line of code off a website and
changed it to my "en-US", maybe there was some kind of weird character
in there. I tried to copy and paste through notepad to filter them
out, but it didn't help. Usually that will work to get plain text for,
say, Word documents. Now I'm getting a "Could not determine the order
of year, month, and date from dd.mm.yy. When I try to DateTime.Parse.
All this culture info stuff seems nice if your customers use the
default date format for their culture, but the old-fashioned Format
seems much easier for customization.

If you need to parse a specific format, look at DateTime.ParseE xact and
specify the format string yourself. You still need to give a culture
info, but in many cases the format string can be culture-insensitive
anyway.

Jon

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Vear <Ve**@discussio ns.microsoft.co m> wrote:

I found that when I'm sending a query or inserting a record that has a date
which I grab from a textbox i've had to do the followin

"#" & datetextbox & "#"

I was getting the same error, SQL likes the pound signs on each end of the
date.

That's definitely not the right way to do it - you've opened yourself
up for a SQL injection attack. You should parse the string into a
DateTime, and then use a parameterized SQL statement, setting the
parameter values appropriately.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.co m>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too