Using SAP Dates in Biztalk

Half the maps I've been doing have SAP in one side or the other. One of the biggest problems are in map transformation.

Making all those substring concatenations is ugly. Creating a functoid is the best thing to do, but in case it is needed just in a map or two, how can it be made?

Convert .NET Date to SAP using C#

dateVariable.ToString("yyyyMMdd", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Convert SAP Date to .NET using C#

DateTime.ParseExact(val1, "yyyyMMdd", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

(the CultureInfo attribute is optional but recommended in both methods)



This problem appeared when I had to calculate a difference between two SAP dates. It end up by being just this:

public int DaysToPay(string val1, string val2) {
DateTime startTime = DateTime.ParseExact(val1,"yyyyMMdd", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
DateTime endTime = DateTime.ParseExact(val2,"yyyyMMdd", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

TimeSpan span = endTime.Subtract ( startTime );

return span.Days-1;
}