How to Parse Date/Time from String

Parse string to DateTime in C#

DateTime.Parse() will try figure out the format of the given date, and it usually does a good job. If you can guarantee dates will always be in a given format then you can use ParseExact():

string s = "2011-03-21 13:26";

DateTime dt = 
    DateTime.ParseExact(s, "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

(But note that it is usually safer to use one of the TryParse methods in case a date is not in the expected format)

Make sure to check Custom Date and Time Format Strings when constructing format string, especially pay attention to number of letters and case (i.e. "MM" and "mm" mean very different things).

Another useful resource for C# format strings is String Formatting in C#

How to convert DateTime to/from specific string format (both ways, e.g. given Format is yyyyMMdd)?

if you have a date in a string with the format "ddMMyyyy" and want to convert it to "yyyyMMdd" you could do like this:

DateTime dt = DateTime.ParseExact(dateString, "ddMMyyyy", 
                                  CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
dt.ToString("yyyyMMdd");

Parsing a string to a date in JavaScript

The best string format for string parsing is the date ISO format together with the JavaScript Date object constructor.

Examples of ISO format: YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.

But wait! Just using the "ISO format" doesn't work reliably by itself. String are sometimes parsed as UTC and sometimes as localtime (based on browser vendor and version). The best practice should always be to store dates as UTC and make computations as UTC.

To parse a date as UTC, append a Z - e.g.: new Date('2011-04-11T10:20:30Z').

To display a date in UTC, use .toUTCString(),

to display a date in user's local time, use .toString().

More info on MDN | Date and this answer.

For old Internet Explorer compatibility (IE versions less than 9 do not support ISO format in Date constructor), you should split datetime string representation to it's parts and then you can use constructor using datetime parts, e.g.: new Date('2011', '04' - 1, '11', '11', '51', '00'). Note that the number of the month must be 1 less.

Alternate method - use an appropriate library:

You can also take advantage of the library Moment.js that allows parsing date with the specified time zone.

How do I convert a date/time string to a DateTime object in Dart?

DateTime has a parse method

var parsedDate = DateTime.parse('1974-03-20 00:00:00.000');

https://api.dartlang.org/stable/dart-core/DateTime/parse.html

Parse date string and change format

datetime module could help you with that:

datetime.datetime.strptime(date_string, format1).strftime(format2)

For the specific example you could do

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.strptime('Mon Feb 15 2010', '%a %b %d %Y').strftime('%d/%m/%Y')
'15/02/2010'
>>>

How can I parse UTC date/time (String) into something more readable?

What you have is an ISO-8601 date format which means you can just use SimpleDateFormat

DateFormat m_ISO8601Local = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'");
m_ISO8601Local.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

And then you can just use SimpleDateFormat.parse(). Also, here is a blog post with some examples that might help.

How to parse date/time from string?

Although I don't know how to format a single-digit month input in boost, I can do it after the two-digit edit:

#include <iostream>
#include <boost/date_time.hpp>
namespace bt = boost::posix_time;
const std::locale formats[] = {
std::locale(std::locale::classic(),new bt::time_input_facet("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")),
std::locale(std::locale::classic(),new bt::time_input_facet("%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S")),
std::locale(std::locale::classic(),new bt::time_input_facet("%d.%m.%Y %H:%M:%S")),
std::locale(std::locale::classic(),new bt::time_input_facet("%Y-%m-%d"))};
const size_t formats_n = sizeof(formats)/sizeof(formats[0]);

std::time_t pt_to_time_t(const bt::ptime& pt)
{
    bt::ptime timet_start(boost::gregorian::date(1970,1,1));
    bt::time_duration diff = pt - timet_start;
    return diff.ticks()/bt::time_duration::rep_type::ticks_per_second;

}
void seconds_from_epoch(const std::string& s)
{
    bt::ptime pt;
    for(size_t i=0; i<formats_n; ++i)
    {
        std::istringstream is(s);
        is.imbue(formats[i]);
        is >> pt;
        if(pt != bt::ptime()) break;
    }
    std::cout << " ptime is " << pt << '\n';
    std::cout << " seconds from epoch are " << pt_to_time_t(pt) << '\n';
}
int main()
{
    seconds_from_epoch("2004-03-21 12:45:33");
    seconds_from_epoch("2004/03/21 12:45:33");
    seconds_from_epoch("23.09.2004 04:12:21");
    seconds_from_epoch("2003-02-11");
}

note that the seconds-from-epoch output will be assuming the date was in UTC:

~ $ ./test | head -2
ptime is 2004-Mar-21 12:45:33
seconds from epoch are 1079873133
~ $ date -d @1079873133
Sun Mar 21 07:45:33 EST 2004

You could probably use boost::posix_time::c_time::localtime() from #include <boost/date_time/c_time.hpp> to get this conversion done assuming the input is in the current time zone, but it is rather inconsistent: for me, for example, the result will be different between today and next month, when daylight saving ends.

Parse Date String to Some Java Object

Using Joda-Time, take a look at DateTimeFormat; it allows parsing both kind of date strings that you mention (and almost any other arbitrary formats). If your needs are even more complex, try DateTimeFormatterBuilder.

To parse #1:

DateTimeFormatter f = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
DateTime dateTime = f.parseDateTime("2012-01-10 23:13:26");

Edit: actually LocalDateTime is a more appropriate type for a datetime without a time zone:

LocalDateTime dateTime = f.parseLocalDateTime("2012-01-10 23:13:26");

And for #2:

DateTimeFormatter f = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("MMMM dd, yyyy");
LocalDate localDate = f.parseLocalDate("January 13, 2012");

And yes, Joda-Time is definitely the way to go, as far as Java date & time handling is concerned. :)

As mostly everyone will agree, Joda is an exceptionally user-friendly library. For example, I had never done this kind of parsing with Joda before, but it took me just a few minutes to figure it out from the API and write it.

Update (2015)

If you're on Java 8, in most cases you should simply use java.time instead of Joda-Time. It contains pretty much all the good stuff—or their equivalents—from Joda. For those already familiar with Joda APIs, Stephen Colebourne's Joda-Time to java.time migration guide comes in handy.

Here are java.time versions of above examples.

To parse #1:

DateTimeFormatter f = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
LocalDateTime dateTime = LocalDateTime.from(f.parse("2012-01-10 23:13:26"));

You cannot parse this into ZonedDateTime or OffsetDateTime (which are counterparts of Joda's DateTime, used in my original answer), but that kinda makes sense because there's no time zone information in the parsed string.

To parse #2:

DateTimeFormatter f = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMMM dd, yyyy");
LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.from(f.parse("January 13, 2012"));

Here LocalDate is the most appropriate type to parse into (just like with Joda-Time).

Convert string Jun 1 2005 1:33PM into datetime

datetime.strptime parses an input string in the user-specified format into a timezone-naive datetime object:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.strptime('Jun 1 2005  1:33PM', '%b %d %Y %I:%M%p')
datetime.datetime(2005, 6, 1, 13, 33)

To obtain a date object using an existing datetime object, convert it using .date():

>>> datetime.strptime('Jun 1 2005', '%b %d %Y').date()
date(2005, 6, 1)

Links:

strptime docs: Python 2, Python 3
strptime/strftime format string docs: Python 2, Python 3
strftime.org format string cheatsheet

Notes:

strptime = "string parse time"
strftime = "string format time"

How to parse a date string into a c++11 std::chrono time_point or similar?

std::tm tm = {};
std::stringstream ss("Jan 9 2014 12:35:34");
ss >> std::get_time(&tm, "%b %d %Y %H:%M:%S");
auto tp = std::chrono::system_clock::from_time_t(std::mktime(&tm));

GCC prior to version 5 doesn't implement std::get_time. You should also be able to write:

std::tm tm = {};
strptime("Thu Jan 9 2014 12:35:34", "%a %b %d %Y %H:%M:%S", &tm);
auto tp = std::chrono::system_clock::from_time_t(std::mktime(&tm));