For strings such as 2012-09-19 01:27:30.000, DateTime.Parse cannot tell what time zone the date and time are from.

DateTime has a Kind property, which can have one of three time zone options:

• Unspecified
• Local
• Utc

NOTE If you are wishing to represent a date/time other than UTC or your local time zone, then you should use DateTimeOffset.

So for the code in your question:

DateTime convertedDate = DateTime.Parse(dateStr);

var kind = convertedDate.Kind; // will equal DateTimeKind.Unspecified

You say you know what kind it is, so tell it.

DateTime convertedDate = DateTime.SpecifyKind(
    DateTime.Parse(dateStr),
    DateTimeKind.Utc);

var kind = convertedDate.Kind; // will equal DateTimeKind.Utc

Now, once the system knows its in UTC time, you can just call ToLocalTime:

DateTime dt = convertedDate.ToLocalTime();

This will give you the result you require.

Do:

var isTrueSet = (myValue === 'true');

using the identity operator (===), which doesn't make any implicit type conversions when the compared variables have different types.

Don't:

You should probably be cautious about using these two methods for your specific needs:

var myBool = Boolean("false");  // == true

var myBool = !!"false";  // == true

Any string which isn't the empty string will evaluate to true by using them. Although they're the cleanest methods I can think of concerning to boolean conversion, I think they're not what you're looking for.