Simple string date validation.

Updated: Use DateTime.TryParse() method instead (which was introduced after this original posting which was originally posted during the .NET version 1.x days and moved from my old blog)

Example:

DateTime testDate; 
bool isValidString = DateTime.TryParse(myDateString, out testDate);

Original (Obsolete) Posting during .NET 1.0:
I am a big fan of maintaining a library of simple and clean helper methods.  Here is a simple and clean way to verify if a string formatted date is a valid date.  This allows you to encapsulate the exception handling making it easy to use and very readable – another important coding practice.

private static bool IsDate(string sDate) 
{ 
    DateTime dt; 
    bool isDate = true;

    try
    {
        dt = DateTime.Parse(sDate); 
    }
    catch 
    { 
        isDate = false; 
    }     return isDate; 
}