How to create a .NET DateTime from ISO 8601 format

Although MSDN says that "s" and "o" formats reflect the standard, they seem to be able to parse only a limited subset of it. Especially it is a problem if the string contains time zone specification. (Neither it does for basic ISO8601 formats, or reduced precision formats - however this is not exactly your case.) That is why I make use of custom format strings when it comes to parsing ISO8601. Currently my preferred snippet is:

static readonly string[] formats = { 
    // Basic formats
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmsszzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmsszz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmssZ",
    // Extended formats
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:sszzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:sszz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ",
    // All of the above with reduced accuracy
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmzzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHmmZ",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mmzzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mmzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mmZ",
    // Accuracy reduced to hours
    "yyyyMMddTHHzzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHzz",
    "yyyyMMddTHHZ",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHHzzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHHzz",
    "yyyy-MM-ddTHHZ"
    };

public static DateTime ParseISO8601String ( string str )
{
    return DateTime.ParseExact ( str, formats, 
        CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, DateTimeStyles.None );
}

If you don't mind parsing TZ-less strings (I do), you can add an "s" line to greatly extend the number of covered format alterations.

Here is one that works better for me (LINQPad version):

DateTime d;
DateTime.TryParseExact(
    "2010-08-20T15:00:00Z",
    @"yyyy-MM-dd\THH:mm:ss\Z",
    CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
    DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal, 
    out d);
d.ToString()

produces

true
8/20/2010 8:00:00 AM

This solution makes use of the DateTimeStyles enumeration, and it also works with Z.

DateTime d2 = DateTime.Parse("2010-08-20T15:00:00Z", null, System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles.RoundtripKind);

This prints the solution perfectly.

using System.Globalization;

DateTime d;
DateTime.TryParseExact(
    "2010-08-20T15:00:00",
    "s",
    CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
    DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal, out d);