SharePoint Minds: sharepoint 2010

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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Convert UTC date using Convert.ToDateTime Surprise

While working on a project I had to convert a date string to DateTime object. As the date value was coming from SharePoint it was a UTC date - "2010-01-01T00:00:00Z". So looking at the date value I expected that Convert.ToDateTime or DateTime.Parse will return me 1/1/2011 12:00:00 but to my surprise I was getting 12/31/2010 7:00:00 PM I quickly realized the mistake I was doing and searched MSDN and thanks to SPUtility class for the rescue. So convert UTC date string to a DateTime object use the following method to get the correct date -

objectDateString is object type with value "2010-01-01T00:00:00Z"

SPUtility.CreateSystemDateTimeFromXmlDataDateTimeFormat(objectDateString.ToString()) returns {1/1/2011 12:00:00 AM} System.DateTime

or the following will also return correct date -

Convert(objectDateString.ToString()).ToDateTime().ToUniversalTime()

using DateTime.Parse or Convert.ToDateTime I was getting wrong dates -
DateTime.Parse(objectDateString.ToString()) returns {12/31/2010 7:00:00 PM} System.DateTime

Convert.ToDateTime("2010-01-01T00:00:00Z") return {12/31/2010 7:00:00 PM}

Again lesson learned to treat DateTime values with respect. :)

For more information in this -
http://www.jamestsai.net/Blog/post/SPRegionalSettingsGlobalTimeZones-How-to-build-world-clock-get-time-zones-information-in-SharePoint.aspx

http://www.novolocus.com/2008/07/31/sharepoint-web-services-and-utc-time-fun-and-games/