DateTime.Parse using culture en-us, despite web.config setting

Question

Question:

in web.config in section

system.web

I have

<globalization culture="de-ch" uiCulture="de-ch" requestEncoding="UTF-8" responseEncoding="UTF-8"/>

What I want is to parse a string like this

"20.03.2012 00:00:00"

to a datetime value

but

DateTime dtAsIs = DateTime.Parse("20.03.2012 00:00:00")

throws an exception

Unfortunately only on the testserver, not on my development system. I do not have access to the testserver, except to copy the webapp over into a windows share.

I can reproduce the exception like this:

DateTime dtThrowsException = DateTime.Parse("20.03.2012 00:00:00",new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-us"));

Whereas it works fine like this:

DateTime dtWorks = DateTime.Parse("20.03.2012 00:00:00",new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("de-ch"));

I checked the ASP page, and there is NO culture set in the asp page

(I mean this:

<% @Page Culture="fr-FR" Language="C#" %>

)

If I set

System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture

and

System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture

to de-ch at the very start of Page_Load like this

System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("de-ch");
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("de-ch");

then it works fine.

The browser language is set to "de-ch", I checked that.

Can anybody tell my why the thread-culture gets set to English ?

I mean the obvious reason is that the server operating system is English, but I can't change that one, only settings in web.config.

Answer 1

The problem seems to be that ASP.NET overwrites the culture even when you explicitly specify it. (Like

DateTime.Parse("Whatever", New System.Globalization.CultureInfo("de-ch"))

)

one needs to force override it

 New System.Globalization.CultureInfo("de-ch", False)

So in order to make it configurable and change it as few as possible, you need to get the culture from web.config with

System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name

and then force set it with

 DateTime.Parse("Whatever", New System.Globalization.CultureInfo(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name, False))

Note the overload with false, it's necessary, otherwise it doesn't really work.

Here is my solution:

Namespace ASP.NET.Sucks
    Public Class PageWithCorrectPageCulture
        Inherits Web.UI.Page

        Protected Sub New()
            System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = New System.Globalization.CultureInfo(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name, False)
            System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = New System.Globalization.CultureInfo(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name, False)
        End Sub

    End Class
End Namespace

Then, in the codebehind, replace System.Web.UI.Page with PageWithCorrectPageCulture

Partial Class whateverpage
    Inherits PageWithCorrectPageCulture
    'Inherits System.Web.UI.Page

And for those who can only copy-pase C#:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.Diagnostics;
namespace ASP.NET.Sucks
{
    public class PageWithCorrectPageCulture : Web.UI.Page
    {

        protected PageWithCorrectPageCulture()
        {
            System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name, false);
            System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name, false);
        }

    }
}

Answer 2

I have the same experience as you, it seems that the globalization tag in web.config is simply ignored. But since you always want to parse dates in the de-ch culture, I don't see what's wrong with just providing the culture to the DateTime.Parse method (some guidelines say this is the best thing to do anyway)