New DateTimeOffset from string

Question

I want to create a new DateTimeOffset with offset = -5 from a string

I do :

string dt = "11082016";    
DateTime date = DateTime.ParseExact(dt, "MMddyyyy", 
                                    CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, 
                                    DateTimeStyles.None);    
DateTimeOffset dto = new DateTimeOffset(date, TimeSpan.FromHours(-5));

Is it possible to create directly a DateTimeOffset without passing by DateTime ?

Answer 1

Sure you can:

string dt = "11082016";
string o = "-5";
var dto = DateTimeOffset.ParseExact(dt + o, "MMddyyyyz", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Though it's not very pretty - the point is DateTimeOffset also has a ParseExact method.

Answer 2

Is it possible to create directly a DateTimeOffset without passing by DateTime ?

No, that's not possible.

Every DateTimeOffset instance has to have it's DateTime part. You can't create a DateTimeOffset instance just with a UTC Offset value.

Of course it has some constructors that doesn't take DateTime as a parameter directly like;

• DateTimeOffset(Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Calendar, TimeSpan)
• DateTimeOffset(Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, TimeSpan)
• DateTimeOffset(Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32, TimeSpan)
• DateTimeOffset(Int64, TimeSpan)

But those Int32 and Int64 values are still generate a Datetime internally for current instance .DateTime property.

I want to create a new DateTimeOffset with offset = -5 from a string

If you could do that, you wouldn't need that string, don't you think?