Wrong formatting of DateTime from QueryString

Question

On my page I have a form for filtering a list of machines. The form posts with GET method. Two of the fields in that form are text fields for entering a date.

Based on the inputs in the form, I'm filtering the list. My problem is, that the date filtering doesn't work as expected.

The dates are entered in the format dd/MM/yyyy. The system CultureInfo is "da-DK". Dates are stored i MSSQL as yyyy-MM-dd.

I have this filter model:

public class MachineFilter
{

    [DisplayName("Search")]
    public string Search { get; set; }

    [DisplayName("Installation date, from")]
    [DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:d}", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)]
    public DateTime? InstallationDateFrom { get; set; }

    [DisplayName("Installation date, to")]
    [DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:d}", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)]
    public DateTime? InstallationDateTo { get; set; }

}

And the filtering (simplified):

[BindProperty(SupportsGet = true)]
public MachineFilter MachineFilter { get; set; }

----

Machines = await _dbContext.Machines.ToListAsync();

if (MachineFilter.InstallationDateFrom != null)
{
    Machines = Machines.Where(x => x.InstallationDate != null && x.InstallationDate >= MachineFilter.InstallationDateFrom).ToList();
}

In this example two things can happen: 1) the filtering isn't applied - or 2) wrong results returns to the list.

From this SO question I also tried converting the input to string and back to DateTime with DateTime.ParseExact:

string dateFrom = MachineFilter.InstallationDateFrom?.ToString("yyyyMMdd", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
DateTime dFrom = DateTime.ParseExact(dateFrom, "yyyyMMdd", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
Machines = Machines.Where(x => x.InstallationDate != null && x.InstallationDate >= dFrom).ToList();

But no matter what I do, I end up with a wrong DateTime format, so entering 01/12/2019 (dd/MM/yyyy) becomes 01/12/2019 (MM/dd/yyyy).

Right now the culture is only "da-DK", so I could do some splitting of the posted input and add a new DateTime(yyyy, MM, dd) of the array, but soon the system will scale to other countries and then dates will be entered as MM/dd/yyyy, so I'd like a more "build-in" approach if possible.

Thanks.

If this is from a web-page, then you can use the standard javascript iso date-format with standard MVC date binders, as per my answer here: stackoverflow.com/questions/10699851/… You should also postpone the .ToListAsync() to after the .Where - statements. I can put this in an answer, if you think I understood the situation correct. — Martin Åhlin
– Martin Åhlin, Commented Jan 31, 2020 at 12:35
I'm not sure what you mean. There's no javascript in this part. — Mads
– Mads, Commented Jan 31, 2020 at 12:41
In believe I've solved it myself. In my filter model I changed InstalledFromDate/InstalledToDate to string and just do DateTime.Parse on the string posted. Sorry for taking your time. — Mads
– Mads, Commented Jan 31, 2020 at 13:10

Mads · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-02 22:52:15Z

0

The solutions to my problem was to set the model types to string instead of DateTime and in my filter parse them to DateTime, like:

[DisplayName("Installation date, from")]
public string InstallationDateFrom { get; set; }

[DisplayName("Installation date, to")]
public string InstallationDateTo { get; set; }

--

Machines = Machines.Where(x => x.InstallationDate != null && x.InstallationDate >= DateTime.Parse(MachineFilter.InstallationDateFrom)).ToList();

answered Feb 2, 2020 at 22:52

Mads

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