I have the following date stored as a string
04.09.2009 (dd.mm.yyyy)
Now I would like it changed to this format:
2009/08/31 (yyyy/mm/dd)
Remember output should be a string value and the input date is a string.
What is the best way to convert it with minimal effort?
Why are you storing the date as a string? That's generally a bad idea...
To convert the string you parse it into a DateTime value, the format that into a string:
string newFormat = DateTime.ParseExact(theDate, "dd'.'MM'.'yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture).ToString("yyyy'/'MM'/'dd")
(Note that you need apostrophes around the slashes to get the literal character, otherwise it will use the date separator character of the culture, which may be a different character.)
Something like:
public static string ConvertDateTimeFormat(string input, string inputFormat,
string outputFormat, IFormatProvider culture)
{
DateTime dateTime = DateTime.ParseExact(input, inputFormat, culture);
return dateTime.ToString(outputFormat, culture);
}
(You can specify null for the culture to use the culture of the current thread.)
Test code:
using System;
class Test
{
public static string ConvertDateTimeFormat(string input, string inputFormat,
string outputFormat, IFormatProvider culture)
{
DateTime dateTime = DateTime.ParseExact(input, inputFormat, culture);
return dateTime.ToString(outputFormat, culture);
}
static void Main()
{
Console.WriteLine(ConvertDateTimeFormat("04.09.2009", "dd'.'MM'.'yyyy",
"yyyy'/'MM'/'dd", null));
}
}
DateTime dateTime = DateTime.ParseExact("04.09.2009", "dd.MM.yy", null);
dateTime.ToString("yyyy/MM/dd");
If your input and output are both strings then you're not really dealing with dates at all. You can just use string manipulation to perform the conversion:
string original = "04.09.2009";
string converted = original.Substring(6, 4) + "/" +
original.Substring(3, 2) + "/" +
original.Substring(0, 2);
