c# Parsing UTC datetime

Question

I am trying to parse 11/23/2011 23:59:59 UTC +0800 as a c# datetime object but trying the standard datetime parse method or even the datetime exact parse I get invalid date.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I would suggest you parse to a DateTimeOffset instead of a DateTime, as recommended in MSDN when using a time zone offset specifier in the format string:

using System;
using System.Globalization;

class Test
{    
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        string text = "11/23/2011 23:59:59 UTC +0800";
        string pattern = "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss 'UTC' zzz";

        DateTimeOffset dto = DateTimeOffset.ParseExact
            (text, pattern, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
        Console.WriteLine(dto);
    }
}

You can then convert that to a DateTime value in UTC if you want, but there's no such thing as "a DateTime with an offset of 8 hours" - a DateTime is either regarded as universal, local or unspecified, with nowhere for a specific offset to be stored.

DateTime is a curious type in various ways, and can cause problems for the unwary developer.