Parsing strings in custom formats using TypeConverter.ConvertFromString()

Question

Using TypeConverter.ConvertFromString(), I need to supply a custom format when parsing data from a string (for example, with DateTime: "ddMMyyyy" or "MMMM dd, yyyy").

TypeConverter.ConvertFromString() has the following overload:

public object ConvertFromString(ITypeDescriptorContext context, 
                                CultureInfo culture, 
                                string text);

I checked up on MSDN about ITypeDescriptorContext.

The ITypeDescriptorContext interface provides contextual information about a component. ITypeDescriptorContext is typically used at design time to provide information about a design-time container. This interface is commonly used in type conversion.

This sounds like what I need to use but I cannot find any examples anywhere.

I am using the following generic method:

public T ParseValue<T>(string value)
{
    return (T)TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(typeof(T)).ConvertFromString(value);
}

Example calling code:

DateTime date = ParseValue<DateTime>("02062001");
decimal amount = ParseValue<decimal>("1.3423");

I want to be able to parse some kind of generic formatting info into this ParseValue() method which can be used by ConvertFromString().

Answer 1

You can create a custom CultureInfo , holding your format.

Another solution would be to Wrap conversion in some helper method that would use DateTime.Parse for dates and TypeConverter for other types.