Convert Any String Date Format To Common Date Format In C#

In this post, we will see how we can accept any date format and return with a common date format with the TryParseExact() method. Converting date to the wanted date format is a time spending and slow process in several languages including C#.

In the below code, I created one method namely ChangeDateFormat which accepts string date in any format and will return with fix format i.e. “MM/dd/yyyy” format.

public string ChangeDateFormat(string inputDate)
{
    string[] formats = { "dd/MM/yyyy", "dd/M/yyyy", "d/M/yyyy", "d/MM/yyyy",
                        "dd/MM/yy", "dd/M/yy", "d/M/yy", "d/MM/yy", "MM/dd/yyyy","yyyy/MM/dd","dd/MM/yyyy","MM-dd-yyyy","yyyyMMdd"};

    DateTime.TryParseExact(inputDate, formats,
    System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
    System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.None, out DateTime outputDate);
    return outputDate.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");
}

In the above method need to pass all possible format in string[] which we wanna accept. we have done now you can use this method anywhere in your project.

I hope you guys found something useful. Please give your valuable feedback/comments/questions about this article. Please let me know how you like and understand this article and how I could improve it.