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; }