Given a DateTime object, how do I get an ISO 8601 date in string format?

Note to readers: Several commenters have pointed out some problems in this answer (related particularly to the first suggestion). Refer to the comments section for more information.

DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH\\:mm\\:ss.fffffffzzz", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Using custom date-time formatting, this gives you a date similar to
2008-09-22T13:57:31.2311892-04:00.

Another way is:

DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("o", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

which uses the standard "round-trip" style (ISO 8601) to give you
2008-09-22T14:01:54.9571247Z.

To get the specified format, you can use:

DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)

DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("s", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture) should give you what you are looking for as the "s" format specifier is described as a sortable date/time pattern; conforms to ISO 8601.

EDIT: To get the additional Z at the end as the OP requires, use "o" instead of "s".

DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("s")

Returns something like 2008-04-10T06:30:00

UtcNow obviously returns a UTC time so there is no harm in:

string.Concat(DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("s"), "Z")

Surprised that no one suggested it:

System.DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("u").Replace(' ','T')

# Using PowerShell Core to demo

# Lowercase "u" format
[System.DateTime]::UtcNow.ToString("u")
> 2020-02-06 01:00:32Z

# Lowercase "u" format with replacement
[System.DateTime]::UtcNow.ToString("u").Replace(' ','T')
> 2020-02-06T01:00:32Z

The UniversalSortableDateTimePattern gets you almost all the way to what you want (which is more an RFC 3339 representation).

Added: I decided to use the benchmarks that were in answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/43793679/653058 to compare how this performs.

tl:dr; it's at the expensive end but still just a little over half a millisecond on my crappy old laptop :-)

Implementation:

[Benchmark]
public string ReplaceU()
{
   var text = dateTime.ToUniversalTime().ToString("u").Replace(' ', 'T');
   return text;
}

Results:

// * Summary *

BenchmarkDotNet=v0.11.5, OS=Windows 10.0.19002
Intel Xeon CPU E3-1245 v3 3.40GHz, 1 CPU, 8 logical and 4 physical cores
.NET Core SDK=3.0.100
  [Host]     : .NET Core 3.0.0 (CoreCLR 4.700.19.46205, CoreFX 4.700.19.46214), 64bit RyuJIT
  DefaultJob : .NET Core 3.0.0 (CoreCLR 4.700.19.46205, CoreFX 4.700.19.46214), 64bit RyuJIT


|               Method |     Mean |     Error |    StdDev |
|--------------------- |---------:|----------:|----------:|
|           CustomDev1 | 562.4 ns | 11.135 ns | 10.936 ns |
|           CustomDev2 | 525.3 ns |  3.322 ns |  3.107 ns |
|     CustomDev2WithMS | 609.9 ns |  9.427 ns |  8.356 ns |
|              FormatO | 356.6 ns |  6.008 ns |  5.620 ns |
|              FormatS | 589.3 ns |  7.012 ns |  6.216 ns |
|       FormatS_Verify | 599.8 ns | 12.054 ns | 11.275 ns |
|        CustomFormatK | 549.3 ns |  4.911 ns |  4.594 ns |
| CustomFormatK_Verify | 539.9 ns |  2.917 ns |  2.436 ns |
|             ReplaceU | 615.5 ns | 12.313 ns | 11.517 ns |

// * Hints *
Outliers
  BenchmarkDateTimeFormat.CustomDev2WithMS: Default     -> 1 outlier  was  removed (668.16 ns)
  BenchmarkDateTimeFormat.FormatS: Default              -> 1 outlier  was  removed (621.28 ns)
  BenchmarkDateTimeFormat.CustomFormatK: Default        -> 1 outlier  was  detected (542.55 ns)
  BenchmarkDateTimeFormat.CustomFormatK_Verify: Default -> 2 outliers were removed (557.07 ns, 560.95 ns)

// * Legends *
  Mean   : Arithmetic mean of all measurements
  Error  : Half of 99.9% confidence interval
  StdDev : Standard deviation of all measurements
  1 ns   : 1 Nanosecond (0.000000001 sec)

// ***** BenchmarkRunner: End *****

DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss zzz");

DateTime.Now.ToString("O");

NOTE: Depending on the conversion you are doing on your end, you will be using the first line (most like it) or the second one.

Make sure to applied format only at local time, since "zzz" is the time zone information for UTC conversion.

To convert DateTime.UtcNow to a string representation of yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ, you can use the ToString() method of the DateTime structure with a custom formatting string. When using custom format strings with a DateTime, it is important to remember that you need to escape your seperators using single quotes.

The following will return the string represention you wanted:

DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("yyyy'-'MM'-'dd'T'HH':'mm':'ss'Z'", DateTimeFormatInfo.InvariantInfo)

Using Newtonsoft.Json, you can do

JsonConvert.SerializeObject(DateTime.UtcNow)

Example: https://dotnetfiddle.net/O2xFSl

To format like 2018-06-22T13:04:16 which can be passed in the URI of an API use:

public static string FormatDateTime(DateTime dateTime)
{
    return dateTime.ToString("s", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
}

As mentioned in other answer, DateTime has issues by design.

NodaTime

I suggest to use NodaTime to manage date/time values:

• Local time, date, datetime
• Global time
• Time with timezone
• Period
• Duration

Formatting

So, to create and format ZonedDateTime you can use the following code snippet:

var instant1 = Instant.FromUtc(2020, 06, 29, 10, 15, 22);

var utcZonedDateTime = new ZonedDateTime(instant1, DateTimeZone.Utc);
utcZonedDateTime.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss'Z'", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
// 2020-06-29T10:15:22Z


var instant2 = Instant.FromDateTimeUtc(new DateTime(2020, 06, 29, 10, 15, 22, DateTimeKind.Utc));

var amsterdamZonedDateTime = new ZonedDateTime(instant2, DateTimeZoneProviders.Tzdb["Europe/Amsterdam"]);
amsterdamZonedDateTime.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss'Z'", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
// 2020-06-29T12:15:22Z

For me NodaTime code looks quite verbose. But types are really useful. They help to handle date/time values correctly.

Newtonsoft.Json

To use NodaTime with Newtonsoft.Json you need to add reference to NodaTime.Serialization.JsonNet NuGet package and configure JSON options.

services
    .AddMvc()
    .AddJsonOptions(options =>
    {
        var settings=options.SerializerSettings;
        settings.DateParseHandling = DateParseHandling.None;
        settings.ConfigureForNodaTime(DateTimeZoneProviders.Tzdb);
    });