Parse date string with single digit day e.g. 1-11-2017 as well as 12-11-2017

Question

So I have a date String coming in with the short date of today. For Example "1-11-2017"

//Here i convert the HttpCookie to a String 
string DateView = Convert.ToString(CurrDay.Value);

//Here i convert the String to DateTime
DateTime myDate = DateTime.ParseExact(DateView, "dd-MM-yyyy", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

After running the code I get the error:

FormatExeption was unhandled by user code

An exception of type 'System.FormatException' occurred in mscorlib.dll but was not handled in user code

Additional information: String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.

Answer 1

1-11-2017 is not in the format of dd-MM-yyyy, specifically the first part. Use d-M-yyyy instead which will use one digit day and month when the value is below 10 (ie. no 0 padding).

Test:

DateTime myDate = DateTime.ParseExact("1-11-2017", "d-M-yyyy", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Console.WriteLine(myDate.ToString());

If you do not know if there will be 0 padding you can pass an array of acceptable formats, the parser will try each one in order they appear in the array.

DateTime myDate = DateTime.ParseExact("1-11-2017", new string[]{"d-M-yyyy", "dd-MM-yyyy"}, System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.None);

Fiddle

Answer 2

The Date format ddstands for The day of the month, from 01 through 31. You either supply it as 01-11-2017 or change your formatter to d-MM-yyyy.

Here's a reference to Custom Date and Time Format Strings

Answer 3

I solved this using yyyy-MM-dd instead of dd-MM-yyyy (and later converting it to normal dates) Becouse the var always was the day of today the day can be 1 and 2 digits

 CurrDay.Value = DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd" ); 

 // Convert String to DateTime
 dateFrom = DateTime.ParseExact(CurrDay.Value.ToString(), "yyyy-MM-dd", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

The comments below helped me find this solution, Thanks to everyone!