leave datetime picker returns 1 / 1 / 0001 12:00:00 AM in c#

Question

I define this in my class

 public DateTime? LineCheckSubmitDateTime { set; get; }

I need to initialize this variable using my gridview

But sometimes i need to leave this value to be null ,But when i leave it it returns 1 / 1 / 0001 12:00:00 AM

so here is my code :

 newObj.LineCheckSubmitDateTime = (Convert.ToDateTime(gridViewDetails.GetRowCellValue(rowHandle, "LineCheckSubmitDateTime"))==DateTime.Parse("1 / 1 / 0001 12:00:00 AM") ) ?   Convert.ToDateTime(gridViewDetails.GetRowCellValue(rowHandle, "LineCheckSubmitDateTime")):null;

So two questions:

1:this code returns this error :

Severity    Code    Description Project File    Line
Error   CS0173  Type of conditional expression cannot be determined because there is no implicit conversion between 'DateTime' and '<null>' 

2:do you have better solution?

Answer 1

The error is because you have to explicitly cast at least one of the operand of conditional operator to DateTime?

A better way to do it would be to compare it with DateTime.MinValue instead of converting minimum date string to DateTime, and also cache the converted value and then use it in the conditional operator instead of converting it twice.

var tempDateConverted = Convert.ToDateTime(gridViewDetails.GetRowCellValue(rowHandle, "LineCheckSubmitDateTime"));
 newObj.LineCheckSubmitDateTime = tempDateConverted == DateTime.MinValue ?
                                    null : (DateTime?) tempDateConverted;

You can also explicitly cast null to DateTime? in the above statement.

I am not sure about the LineCheckSubmitDateTime control in GridView, here is a possibility that its value is already a DateTime object , returned inside an object. You can also try:

object obj = gridViewDetails.GetRowCellValue(rowHandle, "LineCheckSubmitDateTime");
newObj.LineCheckSubmitDateTime = (DateTime?) obj;

With the above code, you don't have to call Convert.ToDateTime.