Why DateTime.Parse does not handle UTC date

Question

Why can't he make it out:

DateTime.Parse("Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 UTC") 

Answer 1

This line cannot be parsed because "UTC" is not a valid time zone pointer.

UTC time is indicated by adding "Z" to the end of the time line, so your parsing code should look like this:

 DateTime.Parse("Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00Z"); 

From Wikipedia article on ISO 8601

If the time is in UTC, add 'Z' immediately after the time without space. "Z" is the zone designation for the UTC zero offset. “09:30 UTC” is therefore represented as “09: 30Z” or “0930Z”. “14:45:15 UTC” will be “14: 45: 15Z” or “144515Z”.

UTC is also known as Zulu, because Zulu is the phonetic alphabetical word for Z.

Answer 2

You need to specify the format:

 DateTime date = DateTime.ParseExact( "Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 UTC", "ddd, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss UTC", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); 

Answer 3

or use the SetToUniversal DateTimeStyle parameter in the call

 DateTime.ParseExact(String, String[], IFormatProvider, DateTimeStyles) 

Answer 4

Assuming you use the “o” format for your date-time, so you have “2016-07-24T18: 47: 36Z”, there is a very simple way to handle this.

Call DateTime.Parse("2016-07-24T18:47:36Z").ToUniversalTime() .

What happens when you call DateTime.Parse("2016-07-24T18:47:36Z") , you get the DateTime value set to the local time zone. Thus, it converts it to local time.

ToUniversalTime() changes it to a UTC DateTime and converts it back to UTC.

Answer 5

This is not a valid format, however, "Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT" is.

The documentation is written as follows:

A string that includes time zone information that complies with ISO 8601. For example, the first of the following two lines indicates Coordinated Universal Time (UTC); the second indicates the time in the time zone seven hours earlier than UTC:

2008-11-01T19: 35: 00.0000000Z

A string that includes the GMT symbol and corresponds to the temporary format RFC 1123. For example:

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:35:00 GMT

A string that includes the date and time along with time zone offset information. For example:

01/03/2009 05:42:00 -5: 00

Answer 6

To correctly parse the line specified in the question without changing it, use the following:

 using System.Globalization; string dateString = "Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 UTC"; DateTime parsedDate = DateTime.ParseExact(dateString, "ddd, d MMM yyyy hh:mm:ss UTC", CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal); 

This implementation uses a string to indicate the exact format of the date string that is being processed. The DateTimeStyles parameter is used to indicate that this string is a coordinated universal time string.

Answer 7

Just use this:

 var myDateUtc = DateTime.SpecifyKind(DateTime.Parse("Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00"), DateTimeKind.Utc); if (myDateUtc.Kind == DateTimeKind.Utc) { Console.WriteLine("Yes. I am UTC!"); } 

You can test this code with the C # online compiler:

http://rextester.com/

Hope this helps.

Answer 8

Just replace “UTC” with “GMT” - a simple one and don’t break correctly formatted dates:

 DateTime.Parse("Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 UTC".Replace("UTC", "GMT")) 

Answer 9

Not sure why, but you can transfer DateTime.ToUniversalTime to try / catch and achieve the same result in more code.

Good luck.