I'm scraping a website and in the html it has a date in the following format:
"date":"\/Date(1184050800000-0700)\/"
If this was in javascript, it would be a date object and I could use its methods to retrieve the data in whatever format I like. However, I'm scraping it in a C# app. Does anyone know what this format is? Is it the total number of seconds after a certain date or something? I need a way to convert this to a C# datetime object.
If I'm not mistaken, that is a Unix timestamp in milliseconds. 1184050800000 is the timestamp itself, and -0700 is the time zone. This epoch convertor confirms.
Here is some code I've used before for converting Unix timestamps into DateTimes. Be sure to include only the part before -0700:
/// <summary>
/// Converts a Unix timestamp into a System.DateTime
/// </summary>
/// <param name="timestamp">The Unix timestamp in milliseconds to convert, as a double</param>
/// <returns>DateTime obtained through conversion</returns>
public static DateTime ConvertFromUnixTimestamp(double timestamp)
{
DateTime origin = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
return origin.AddSeconds(timestamp / 1000); // convert from milliseconds to seconds
}
If you encounter Unix timestamps that are in seconds, you just have to remove the / 1000 part of the last line of the code.
AddMilliseconds method rather than dividing by 1000, although it makes no difference whatsoever in this case
As sinelaw says it seems to be a regex of some sort, however I tried parsing out the numeric values:
1184050800000-0700
And they seem to correspond to:
1184050800000 - Unix timestamp in milliseconds
-0700 - this would be the timezone offset UTC-07:00
You could parse it (I assume it's a string from a JSON object) and convert it to a DateTime like this:
string dateString = "/Date(1184050800000-0700)/";
Regex re = new Regex(@"(\d+)([-+]\d{4})");
Match match = re.Match(dateString);
long timestamp = Convert.ToInt64(match.Groups[1].Value);
int offset = Convert.ToInt32(match.Groups[2].Value) / 100;
DateTime date = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1).AddMilliseconds(timestamp).AddHours(-offset);
Console.WriteLine(date); // 7/10/2007 2:00:00 PM
Am I wrong? It looks like a regexp to me, not a date object at all.
DateTime now = new DateTime(1184050800000);
Console.WriteLine(now); // 2/01/0001 8:53:25 AM
Could this be correct if you aren't interested in the year?
A date and time expressed in the number of 100-nanosecond intervals that have elapsed since January 1, 0001 at 00:00:00.000 in the Gregorian calendar. (msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z2xf7zzk.aspx) Thus, I don't think that this is the correct approach.
DateTimeOffset.ToUnixTime*(..)andFromUnixTime*(...)and possiblyTimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(..)to handle timezone offset, link to the docs