How to convert this date time string?

Question

I am getting this date time string from Sharepoint:

2013-01-01 08:00:00:000

I want to convert it to

2013-01-01 08:00:00 AM

Any ideas how to do that? Every time I try to use Date.Parse, I get an error saying the string is not a valid date time type

Answer 1

Best option is parsing it to DateTime and get it's string representation with a specific format.

string s = "2013-01-01 08:00:00:000";
DateTime dt;
if(DateTime.TryParseExact(s, "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss:fff", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
                          DateTimeStyles.None, out dt))
{
    dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture).Dump();
    // 2013-01-01 08:00:00 AM
}

Based on Jon's comment , you can use ParseExact as well.

DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact("2013-01-01 08:00:00:000",
                                  "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss:fff", 
                                  CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
string s = dt.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Or you can format directly that ParseExact return value;

string s = DateTime.ParseExact("2013-01-01 08:00:00:000",
                               "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss:fff", 
                               CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)
                   .ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss tt", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);