What is the DateTime TryParse method?

The DateTime TryParse method converts the string representation of a date and time to a DateTime object and returns true if the conversion was successful and false if otherwise.

Syntax

TryParse has four overloads:

TryParse(ReadOnlySpan, IFormatProvider, DateTimeStyles, DateTime)
TryParse(String, DateTime)
TryParse(String, IFormatProvider, DateTimeStyles, DateTime)
TryParse(ReadOnlySpan, DateTime)

This shot will cover the most commonly used one, TryParse(String, DateTime).

TryParse(String, DateTime)

This method converts the string representation of a date and time to the equivalent DateTime object. The method returns True if the conversion was successful and false if otherwise.

public static bool TryParse (string? s, out DateTime? result);

s: A string containing a date and time to convert.
result: When this method returns, result contains the DateTime value equivalent to the date and time contained in s if the conversion succeeded and MinValue if the conversion failed.

Returns true if the string s was converted successfully; otherwise, false.

The DateTime.TryParse(String, DateTime) method is similar to the DateTime.Parse(String) method, except that the TryParse(String, DateTime) method does not throw an exception if the conversion fails.

Code

The following example passes several date and time strings to the DateTime.TryParse(String, DateTime) method:

using System;
using System.Globalization;
public class Example
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      DateTime dateValue;  // to store the results
      // Example 1
      string dateString1 = "05/01/2020 14:57:32.8";
      
      if (DateTime.TryParse(dateString1, out dateValue))
         Console.WriteLine("Converted '{0}' to {1}.", dateString1, dateValue);
      else
         Console.WriteLine("Unable to parse '{0}'.", dateString1);
      
       // Example 2 
      string dateString2 = "1 May 2020 2:57:32.8 PM";
      if (DateTime.TryParse(dateString2, out dateValue))
         Console.WriteLine("Converted '{0}' to {1}.", dateString2, dateValue);
      else
         Console.WriteLine("Unable to parse '{0}'.", dateString2);
       // Example 3
      string dateString3 = "not a date";
      if (DateTime.TryParse(dateString3, out dateValue))
         Console.WriteLine("Converted '{0}' to {1}.", dateString3, dateValue);
      else
         Console.WriteLine("Unable to parse '{0}'.", dateString3);
   }
}
// The examples above display the following:
//      Converted '05/01/2020 14:57:32.8' to 5/1/2020 2:57:32 PM.
//      Converted '1 May 2020 2:57:32.8 PM' to 5/1/2020 2:57:32 PM .
//      Unable to parse 'not a date'.

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