What's wrong with this DateTime Parser?

Question

This is such a Date I have from a JSON:

"created_time": "1383734307"

So my code is:

var myData = DateTime.ParseExact((string)item.created_time, "ddd MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzzz yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

but I get String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.

"1383734307" looks nothing like "ddd MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzzz yyyy". — Dialecticus, Nov 06 '13 at 16:34
Do you know what date `1383734307` is supposed to represent? It will help someone provide you a way of turning that number to a `DateTime` instance — Jamiec, Nov 06 '13 at 16:35

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 06 '13 at 16:37

Your number 1383734307, looks like number of seconds elapsed since 1970/01/01 (Unix Epoch) you can do the following to get the DateTime

DateTime dt = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1).AddSeconds(1383734307);

This will return : dt = {06/11/2013 10:38:27 AM}

Currently the format you are using to parse DateTime is invalid.

For your case it appears that created_time is of type long/int, since you are casting it to string, you can do:

DateTime dt = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1).AddSeconds(created_time);

Or you can parse it to long like:

DateTime dt = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1).AddSeconds(Convert.ToInt64(created_time));

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:55

First of all, your data is not a DateTime, it is a timestamp. So check this question how to make DateTime from it: How to convert UNIX timestamp to DateTime and vice versa?.

For c# it would be:

public static DateTime UnixTimeStampToDateTime( double unixTimeStamp )
{
    // Unix timestamp is seconds past epoch
    System.DateTime dtDateTime = new DateTime(1970,1,1,0,0,0,0);
    dtDateTime = dtDateTime.AddSeconds( unixTimeStamp ).ToLocalTime();
    return dtDateTime;
}

Then, you can use ToString method, to generate datatime string from your DateTime instance, which matches your format:

var dateString = myDateTime.ToString("ddd MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzzz yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 06 '13 at 16:37

1

That looks like a Unix (seconds past epoch) Timestamp:

You need something like this

var dateTime = new DateTime(1970,1,1,0,0,0,0);
dateTime = dateTime .AddSeconds( unixTime ).ToLocalTime();

answered Nov 06 '13 at 16:37

Science_Fiction

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score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

0

You need to convert from epoch time to DateTime in C#, check this answer with the code to do the conversion: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2883645/892290

edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

Community

1
1

answered Nov 06 '13 at 16:37

majimenezp

302
2
3

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 06 '13 at 16:38

0

Try this:

new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0).AddSeconds(long.Parse((string)item.created_time));

answered Nov 06 '13 at 16:38

mehmet mecek

2,615
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What's wrong with this DateTime Parser?

5 Answers5