How to create a .NET DateTime from ISO 8601 format

I've found how to turn a DateTime into an ISO 8601 format, but nothing on how to do the reverse in C#.

I have 2010-08-20T15:00:00Z, and I want to turn it into a DateTime object.

I could separate the parts of the string myself, but that seems like a lot of work for something that is already an international standard.

This solution makes use of the DateTimeStyles enumeration, and it also works with Z.

DateTime d2 = DateTime.Parse("2010-08-20T15:00:00Z", null, System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.RoundtripKind);

This prints the solution perfectly.

Although MSDN says that "s" and "o" formats reflect the standard, they seem to be able to parse only a limited subset of it. Especially it is a problem if the string contains time zone specification. (Neither it does for basic ISO8601 formats, or reduced precision formats - however this is not exactly your case.) That is why I make use of custom format strings when it comes to parsing ISO8601. Currently my preferred snippet is:

static readonly string[] formats = { 
    // Basic formats
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmsszzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmsszz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmssZ",
    // Extended formats
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:sszzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:sszz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ",
    // All of the above with reduced accuracy
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmzzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmZ",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mmzzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mmzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mmZ",
    // Accuracy reduced to hours
    "yyyyMMddTHHzzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHZ",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHHzzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHHzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHHZ"
    };

public static DateTime ParseISO8601String ( string str )
{
    return DateTime.ParseExact ( str, formats, 
        CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, DateTimeStyles.None );
}

If you don't mind parsing TZ-less strings (I do), you can add an "s" line to greatly extend the number of covered format alterations.

using System.Globalization;

DateTime d;
DateTime.TryParseExact(
    "2010-08-20T15:00:00",
    "s",
    CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
    DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal, out d);

Here is one that works better for me (LINQPad version):

DateTime d;
DateTime.TryParseExact(
    "2010-08-20T15:00:00Z",
    @"yyyy-MM-dd\THH:mm:ss\Z",
    CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
    DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal, 
    out d);
d.ToString()

produces

true
8/20/2010 8:00:00 AM

It seems important to exactly match the format of the ISO string for TryParseExact to work. I guess Exact is Exact and this answer is obvious to most but anyway...

In my case, Reb.Cabin's answer doesn't work as I have a slightly different input as per my "value" below.

Value: 2012-08-10T14:00:00.000Z

There are some extra 000's in there for milliseconds and there may be more.

However if I add some .fff to the format as shown below, all is fine.

Format String: @"yyyy-MM-dd\THH:mm:ss.fff\Z"

In VS2010 Immediate Window:

DateTime.TryParseExact(value,@"yyyy-MM-dd\THH:mm:ss.fff\Z", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal, out d);

true

You may have to use DateTimeStyles.AssumeLocal as well depending upon what zone your time is for...

This works fine in LINQPad4:

Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Parse("2010-08-20T15:00:00Z"));
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Parse("2010-08-20T15:00:00"));
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Parse("2010-08-20 15:00:00"));

DateTime.ParseExact(...) allows you to tell the parser what each character represents.