Why can't DateTime.Parse parse UTC date

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Why can't it parse this:

DateTime.Parse("Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:00:00 UTC")
10 Answers

I've put together a utility method which employs all tips shown here plus some more:

    static private readonly string[] MostCommonDateStringFormatsFromWeb = {
        "yyyy'-'MM'-'dd'T'hh:mm:ssZ",  //     momentjs aka universal sortable with 'T'     2008-04-10T06:30:00Z          this is default format employed by moment().utc().format()
        "yyyy'-'MM'-'dd'T'hh:mm:ss.fffZ", //  syncfusion                                   2008-04-10T06:30:00.000Z      retarded string format for dates that syncfusion libs churn out when invoked by ejgrid for odata filtering and so on
        "O", //                               iso8601                                      2008-04-10T06:30:00.0000000
        "s", //                               sortable                                     2008-04-10T06:30:00
        "u"  //                               universal sortable                           2008-04-10 06:30:00Z
    };

    static public bool TryParseWebDateStringExactToUTC(
        out DateTime date,
        string input,
        string[] formats = null,
        DateTimeStyles? styles = null,
        IFormatProvider formatProvider = null
    )
    {
        formats = formats ?? MostCommonDateStringFormatsFromWeb;
        return TryParseDateStringExactToUTC(out date, input, formats, styles, formatProvider);
    }

    static public bool TryParseDateStringExactToUTC(
        out DateTime date,
        string input,
        string[] formats = null,
        DateTimeStyles? styles = null,
        IFormatProvider formatProvider = null
    )
    {
        styles = styles ?? DateTimeStyles.AllowWhiteSpaces | DateTimeStyles.AssumeUniversal | DateTimeStyles.AdjustToUniversal; //0 utc
        formatProvider = formatProvider ?? CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;

        var verdict = DateTime.TryParseExact(input, result: out date, style: styles.Value, formats: formats, provider: formatProvider);
        if (verdict && date.Kind == DateTimeKind.Local) //1
        {
            date = date.ToUniversalTime();
        }

        return verdict;

        //0 employing adjusttouniversal is vital in order for the resulting date to be in utc when the 'Z' flag is employed at the end of the input string
        //  like for instance in   2008-04-10T06:30.000Z
        //1 local should never happen with the default settings but it can happen when settings get overriden   we want to forcibly return utc though
    }

Notice the use of '-' and 'T' (single-quoted). This is done as a matter of best practice since regional settings interfere with the interpretation of chars such as '-' causing it to be interpreted as '/' or '.' or whatever your regional settings denote as date-components-separator. I have also included a second utility method which show-cases how to parse most commonly seen date-string formats fed to rest-api backends from web clients. Enjoy.

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