Powershell parsing date from log - powershell

Question

I'm trying to parse a log file to extract the date from the log file entry. I am able to find the line, but my parsing appears to not be converting the date.
$SBError = "DbConnection"
$SBWebPath = "E:\Temp\server.log"
$result = Get-Content $SBWebPath | Select-String $SBError -casesensitive | Select -last 1 | Out-String
$result | Select-String '####<(\S+ \S+, \S+ \S+ \S+) \S+>' | ForEach-Object {
$DBdateTime = $_.Matches[0].Groups[1].Value -as [DateTime]
}
Write-Output $result
Write-Output $DBdateTime
server.log file contents:
####<Dec 9, 2018 2:59:08,082 AM EST> <Info> <HTTP> Data flowing fine.
####<Dec 9, 2018 2:59:08,085 AM EST> <Warning> <HTTP> framework.db.DbConnection.
Output from script:
####<Dec 9, 2018 2:59:08,085 AM EST> <Warning> <HTTP> framework.db.DbConnection.
Variable from $DBdateTime is not populating, I suspect due to incorrect or invalid parsing and/or inclusion of milliseconds in the log date.
I don't care about the milliseconds, only the Month day year hour minutes seconds and the AM/PM tag. Also don't care about EST but need to keep in mind that when server changes to EDT this value would exist in place of EST.
Any assistance is appreciated.

Answer 1

You're getting an empty value for $DBDateTime because PowerShell doesn't recognize the value of your captured group as a valid DateTime, so the string cannot be cast to that type. You need to actually parse it.
$culture = [Globalization.CultureInfo]::InvariantCulture
$pattern = 'MMM d, yyyy h:mm:ss,fff tt'
$DBDateTime = [DateTime]::ParseExact($_.Matches[0].Groups[1].Value, $pattern, $culture)
See here and here for valid format strings.