String was not recognized as a valid DateTime

Question

I am getting error on this code
var newDate = DateTime.ParseExact(
lineArr[0],
"dd-MM-yyyy",
System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

lineArr[0] has date as 29-12-2023
when I run the job from server get this error. when i run it from local no error is there.
this get formated to 12/29/2023

Amit Mohanty · Answer

Try this var culture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US"); // Change to the appropriate culture if needed var newDate = DateTime.ParseExact( lineArr[0], "dd-MM-yyyy", culture);

Vijay Pratap Singh · Answer

The issue you're encountering could be related to differences in the default date formats used by different systems. It's generally a good practice to explicitly specify the date format to avoid these kinds of errors. In your code, you are using the "dd-MM-yyyy" format, but if the server's culture settings are different, it might be expecting a different format. Verify the culture settings on your server. If the server has a different default culture, it might be expecting dates in a different format. You can set the culture explicitly at the beginning of your code or in the application CultureInfo.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("en-US"); // or the culture you need

Amit Mohanty · Answer

When you create a CultureInfo object with " en-US ", it specifies that you want to interpret data according to the conventions used in the United States. This culture explicitly tells the code to interpret the date string " 29-12-2023 " in the format dd-MM-yyy , which matches the format you're trying to parse ("dd-MM-yyyy").

Jayraj Chhaya · Answer

Hi Aniket Narvankar, The error message "String was not recognized as a valid DateTime" typically occurs when the input string does not match the specified format string. In this case, the code is trying to parse the date string "29-12-2023" using the format "dd-MM-yyyy". The issue might be related to the different culture settings on the server compared to your local machine. The DateTime.ParseExact method relies on the current culture's date and time format settings to parse the input string. If the server's culture settings are different from your local machine, it can cause the parsing to fail. To resolve this issue, you can explicitly specify the culture to use for parsing by passing the CultureInfo object as the third argument to the DateTime.ParseExact method. This ensures consistent parsing regardless of the server's culture settings. Here's an updated version of the code that includes the explicit culture specification: var newDate = DateTime.ParseExact( lineArr[0], "dd-MM-yyyy", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture ); By using CultureInfo.InvariantCulture , you ensure that the parsing is performed using a fixed format that is not affected by the server's culture settings. Try running the updated code on the server, and it should successfully parse the date string "29-12-2023" into a DateTime object without throwing the error.

Aniket Narvankar · Answer

Also on server date is 29/12/2023 and one machine it is 12/29/2023

Aniket Narvankar · Answer

var culture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US"); what will this do?