Add One New DateTime Parsing Format #11719
Description
Yesterday I posted a suggestion that we have a new special format for Get-Date that creates the SecondsSinceEpoch (aka UnixTime) for users.
Additionally I think we should have built into the language the ability to easily parse a UnixEpoch timestamp back into a DateTime.
Various existing parsing that works today:
$aDate = [DateTime]"2020-01-28T17:32:18.4986003-06:00" # (conversion back from the format of Format "o")
$bDate = [DateTime]"2020-01-28T17:36:39" # (conversion back from the format of Format "s")
$cDate = [DateTime]"Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:37:43 GMT" # (conversion back from the format of Format "r")
$dDate = [DateTime]"2020-01-28 17:38:24Z" # (conversion back from the format of Format "u")
$eDate = [DateTime]"7/25/2013 6:37:31 PM"
$fDate = [DateTime]"2013-07-25 14:26:00"
$gDate = [DateTime]"7/25/2013 14:26:00"
$hDate = [DateTime]"2013-07-25 6:37:31 PM"
But we can't currently put in $AUnixDate = [DateTime]"1374755180" and end up with a valid DateTime object (which would be of UTC kind)
A discussion by Randy James at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17859421/parse-datetime-in-multiple-formats suggests perhaps something along these lines for processing this in another language:
public DateTime ParseRequestDate()
{
// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2883576/how-do-you-convert-epoch-time-in-c
CultureInfo enUS = new CultureInfo("en-US");
var dt = "1374755180";
//var dt = "7/25/2013 6:37:31 PM";
//var dt = "2013-07-25 14:26:00";
DateTime dateValue;
long dtLong;
// Scenario #1
if (long.TryParse(dt, out dtLong))
return dtLong.FromUnixTime();
// Scenario #2 & #3
var formatStrings = new string[] { "MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt", "yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss" };
if (DateTime.TryParseExact(dt, formatStrings, enUS, DateTimeStyles.None, out dateValue))
return dateValue;
throw new SomeException("Don't know how to parse...");
}