How to set DateTime to null

Question

Using C#. I have a string dateTimeEnd.

If the string is in right format, I wish to generate a DateTime and assign it to eventCustom.DateTimeEnd of type

public Nullable<System.DateTime> DateTimeEnd { get; set; } 

If dateTimeEnd is null or empty I need eventCustom.DateTimeEnd set to null.

I am trying to achieve this using the following code but I get always null for eventCustom.DateTimeEnd.

Could you please help me out to define what is wrong in my code?

   DateTime? dateTimeEndResult;      if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(dateTimeEnd))         dateTimeEndResult = DateTime.Parse(dateTimeEnd);   eventCustom.DateTimeEnd = dateTimeEndResult = true ? (DateTime?)null : dateTimeEndResult; 

Answer 1

It looks like you just want:

eventCustom.DateTimeEnd = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(dateTimeEnd)     ? (DateTime?) null     : DateTime.Parse(dateTimeEnd); 

Note that this will throw an exception if dateTimeEnd isn't a valid date.

An alternative would be:

DateTime validValue; eventCustom.DateTimeEnd = DateTime.TryParse(dateTimeEnd, out validValue)     ? validValue     : (DateTime?) null; 

That will now set the result to null if dateTimeEnd isn't valid. Note that TryParse handles null as an input with no problems.