Flutter | Dart — How to convert a date/time string to a DateTime object in Dart

There seem to be a lot of questions about parsing timestamp strings into DateTime. I will try to give a more general answer and examples.

There seem to be a lot of questions about parsing timestamp strings into DateTime. I will try to give a more general answer and examples in this article.

Your timestamp is in an ISO format. Examples: 1999-04-23, 1999-04-23 13:45:56Z, 19990423T134556.789. In this case, you can use DateTime.parse or DateTime.tryParse. (See the DateTime.parse documentation for the precise set of allowed inputs.)

Your timestamp is in a standard HTTP format. Examples: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 13:45:56 GMT, Friday, 23-Apr-99 13:45:56 GMT, Fri Apr 23 13:45:56 1999. In this case, you can use dart:io's HttpDate.parse function.

Your timestamp is in some local format. Examples: 23/4/1999, 4/23/99, April 23, 1999. You can use package:intl's DateFormat class and provide a pattern specifying how to parse the string:

import 'package:intl/intl.dart';

...

var dmyString = '23/4/1999';
var dateTime1 = DateFormat('d/M/yyyy').parse(dmyString);

var mdyString = '4/23/99'; 
var dateTime2 = DateFormat('M/d/yy').parse(mdyString)…