How to check given date is in MM/DD/YYYY format

[neerajmca5 (Neeraj Yadav)]

Hi,

I am getting date from excel and just I want to check that given date is in MM/DD/YYYY format or not?

If date is 30/31/2018 then return false.
If date is 04/11/2018 then return true.

Please help me.

Regards,

Neeraj Yadav

[Dave (David Wiebelhaus)]

Is it stored in excel as a date, or as text?

Depending on format, you can convert it to a datetime variable, then specify whatever format you’d like. Your example would be datetime.tostring(“MM/dd/yyyy”)

[neerajmca5 (Neeraj Yadav)]

as a date

[Dave (David Wiebelhaus)]

UiPath is pretty good about recognizing dates in excel as actual dates. Just save the range as a datatable (the date values will be stored as datetime in the table), or save the cell directly as a datetime variable. Then you can use it throughout the rest of your workflow with the format you need

[neerajmca5 (Neeraj Yadav)]

Hi Dave,

Just I want to check the date value as in below given example.

If date is 30/31/2018 then return false.
If date is 04/11/2018 then return true.

[arivu96 (Arivazhagan A)]

Hi @neerajmca5,

string inputString = “2000-02-02”;
DateTime dDate;

if (DateTime.TryParse(inputString, out dDate))
{
    String.Format("{0:d/MM/yyyy}", dDate); 
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("Invalid"); // <-- Control flow goes here

Refer this

Checking Date format from a string in C#

Regards,
Arivu

[neerajmca5 (Neeraj Yadav)]

But this concept is not working in uipath.

[Dave (David Wiebelhaus)]

Again, since you’re getting the date from excel, just use date.tostring(MM/dd/yyyy) in your workflow. That will always be in the format you’re looking for.

For a different use case where you are getting the date in string format already, you should use the datetime.tryparse as @arivu96 has written out and linked. Note that he is writing actual code rather than using the UiPath workflow. If you want to copy+paste you can do it in an invoke code activity. Otherwise, you can recreate it using standard activities such as If activity, along with an assign activity.

[Dominic]

Sharing this from my past learning,

Why it didn’t work in Assign/IF activity?

Pass by Reference Variable is not getting set in TryParseExact method

This might shed some light, although the topic is quite old I think it’s still relevant: In short - WWF uses different allocation schemes (context) than traditional .Net. For most common ones (f.e. dates) Microsoft has supplied some supplementary packages (check your available packages for Workflow Manager Activities and Microsoft.Activities.Extensions). For the rest you’ll need a combination of InvokeMethod, InvokeCode (if you have a version that supports it) and/or custom activities.

How can we resolve ? Existing sample for Double.TryParse

Academy 2 - Walkthrough – UiDemo - TryParse

Hello María, [image] This method stores the result value in a variable that has to be passed as reference. Variables don’t have the concept of in/out as arguments in WF. They don’t implement implicit operators so the result will never be stored as you wish. If you need the value you can use InvokeMethod, here is an example: TEST_DOUBLE_TRYPARSE.zip (2.1 KB) Regards, Susana

Solution: Use TryParseExact/TryParse in Invoke Code/Method

Date_TryParseExact_InvokeMethod.xaml (13.5 KB)

Note: You can also use TryParse for your requirement

MSDN References:

1. DateTime.TryParse Method (String, DateTime)
2. DateTime.TryParseExact Method (String, String[], IFormatProvider, DateTimeStyles, DateTime)

[arivu96 (Arivazhagan A)]

Hi @neerajmca5,

@neerajmca5

But this concept is not working in UiPath.

dDate->DateTime variable
False → Convert.ToString(DateTime.TryParse("30/31/2018",dDate))
True → Convert.ToString(DateTime.TryParse("04/11/2018",dDate))

In If condition you can use like as
False → DateTime.TryParse("30/31/2018",dDate)
True → DateTime.TryParse("04/11/2018",dDate)

Regards,
Arivu

[Joshikumarav (Joshi Kumar)]

Hey Arivu,

How do i use the above logic for this usecaes:

09/06/2018
06/09/2018

Thanks
Joshi

[akila93]

Hi ,

Both the date format are same??

[AkshaySandhu (AkshaySingh Sandhu)]

@Joshikumarav
below will give you a boolean value

Date.TryParseExact(strDate,“dd/MM/yyyy”,Nothing,Globalization.DateTimeStyles.None,Nothing).ToString

[Joshikumarav (Joshi Kumar)]

@akila93 No there is no format on the column. Apparently the excel comes from various sources and each of them contains different formats of date.

@AkshaySandhu - your code may return true for both my cases. But, I need to extract the date from 06/09/2018 and 09/06/2018. Is there any way?

[AkshaySandhu (AkshaySingh Sandhu)]

@Joshikumarav
if you know the date format for given string then yes…
Date.ParseExact(Str,DateFormatOfString,Nothing)

[pavanh003 (Pavan Harisha)]

Hi,
You can try the following Date.TryParseExact(stringVariable,“MM/dd/yyyy”,Nothing,Globalization.DateTimeStyles.None,Nothing).ToStringt

Please mark as solution if this is your solution, or else let us know if this doesn’t work.

Regards,
Pavan H

[Emil.tophoej (Emil Tophøj)]

Hi @Dominic

Downloaded the .xaml and tried filling in “now().tostring” which is giving a string like “07/10/2019 08:35:53” but the parsed date is 01/01/0001

My goal is yto get a datetime as string that can be passed in a filename (ie. no \ or / ) - preferably in a format like “dd-mm-yyyy tt.mm” (seen this format work)

[LarsFeilberg (Lorry)]

Perfect

[veerishu (Veeresh Uppin)]

I have a similar goal to be achieved. " Checking if the excel data is in MM/DD/YYYY format " Cann anyone help me with xaml file

[AshwinS2 (Ashwin S)]

Hi @veerishu

Check this

Convert.ToDateTime(row( “ColumnName at”).ToString(“DD/MM/YYYY”))

Thanks
Ashwin.S