What is the correct way in C# to parse this date format "Mon Oct 07 00:00:00 EDT 2013"?

Question

I am getting a json message from a server and I am trying to parse it into C# objects. I am using the RestSharp Deserializer. There is one field that is not properly converting into a datetime:

the string value of the field in this message is:

"createDateTime":"Mon Oct 07 00:00:00 EDT 2013"

on my object I have this as:

public DateTime? createDateTime { get; set; }

NOTE: that is a nullable DateTime because something the field is blank

but when I do this:

var deSerializer = new JsonDeserializer();
var response = client.Execute(request);
var responseObj = _deSerializer .Deserialize<Response>(response);
return responseObj;

I realized the root cause is that the DateTime.Parse is failing. I tried adding this which causes it to use

   DateTime.ParseExact()

  _deserializer.DateFormat = "ddd MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy";

but I then get an error stating:

String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.

so this all comes down to how in C# to parse a date coming in as this format

   Mon Oct 07 00:00:00 EDT 2013

Answer 1

since in my case I don't really care about time and the timezone is always in EDT, i wrote this to get around this issue in the short term.

    private DateTime? ParseMe(string s)
    {
        var split = s.Split(new[] {' '},StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

        var year = int.Parse(split[split.Count()-1]);
        var day = int.Parse(split[2]);
        var month = split[1];
        int monthInDigit = DateTime.ParseExact(month, "MMM", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture).Month;
        return new DateTime(year, monthInDigit, day);
    }