How to convert byte array (SQL-server Timestamp) to DateTime (C#)?

Question

How can I convert an array of bytes into DateTime ? I must do this because I use a property (named CreationDataStamp ) with attribute Timestamp for entity framework. A second property (named CreationDate ) I use for convert the byte array into DateTime .

[System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Timestamp]
public byte[] CreationDateStamp { get; set; }

[System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema.NotMapped]
public DateTime CreationDate
{
    get
    {
        return Convert.ToDateTime(CreationDateStamp);
    }
}

The problem is that I've this exception on the 9 ^th line:

Unable to cast object of type System.Byte[] to type System.IConvertible .

---

Update:

I've also tried this from this question: How to convert a byte[] into datetime in C#?

long longVar = BitConverter.ToInt64(CreationDateStamp, 0);
DateTime dateTimeVar = new DateTime(1980,1,1).AddMilliseconds(longVar);

but I've got this exception:

Value to add was out of range.
Parameter name: value

Can you help me?

Answer 1

Sql server Timestamp is not a DateTime . It is a versioning column for the tuple (row).

• Sql server references - See rowversion and for older versions timestamp .
• Entity framework references - Handling Concurrency with the Entity Framework 6 .

In short, you can't do what you are trying to do.

Answer 2

Try something like this:

long longVar = BitConverter.ToInt64(byteValue, 0);
DateTime dateTimeVar = new DateTime(1980,1,1).AddMilliseconds(longVar);

Hope that helps.