getting rid of the timezone part in servicestack.text json de/serialization?

Question

Do you guys know how to eleminate the TimeZone part from servicestack.text JsonSerializer's result? It's currently like

2015-06-30T23:59:00.0000000+08:00

, I want it to be

2015-06-30T23:59:00.0000000

Thx a lot!

Answer 1

Service Stack is probably doing the right thing. Check the .Kind property of the DateTime you are serializing. If you don't want a time zone offset included, then it should be DateTimeKind.Unspecified. My guess is that your value has DateTimeKind.Local, so it is capturing your local offset.

Consider the following code:

JsConfig.DateHandler = JsonDateHandler.ISO8601;
Debug.WriteLine(JsonSerializer.SerializeToString(DateTime.Now));
Debug.WriteLine(JsonSerializer.SerializeToString(DateTime.UtcNow));
Debug.WriteLine(JsonSerializer.SerializeToString(new DateTime(2013, 1, 1)));

Output on my machine:

"2013-07-27T11:42:02.3711281-07:00"
"2013-07-27T18:42:02.4071518Z"
"2013-01-01T00:00:00.0000000"

Answer 2

Just to add my .02$ on this topic since I've spent quite some time during past several years playing with systems that span across different timezones.

Basically it boils down to NEVER use DateTime.Now; always go with DateTime.UtcNow. I've made a custom component that allowed me to have DateTimeCustom.Now that gave me Now in specific timezone (so no matter what is the timezone on the server I could always have "local" time); it worked in practice but eventually I ended up tying it to UTC (DateTimeCustom.Now = DateTime.UtcNow)... since the biggest problem was converting to different timezones from "your" timezone - you don't want to go there.

So basically:

1. Everything you do on the server, go with DateTime.UtcNow. If you have some logs that are just for you and you only, and you REALLY want to keep it in whatever timezone is the server... sure, go for it. Just remember what I said when you go on a trip a half way across the globe and need to look at the logs.

2. If client is sending in dates to the server (i.e. there is no way to do DateTime.UtcNow), convert what he sent to UTC and save that to db. Sure... "convert what client sents to UTC" is easier said than done, but answers like this once can help a lot.

3. If you are displaying dates, use ServiceStack.Text for serializing Json and set JsConfig.DateHandler = DateHandler.ISO8601; & JsConfig.AssumeUtc = true;

4. On the client use AngularJs and it'll handle displaying date/time in local timezone with ease, like {{myobj.mydate | date:'HH:mm:ss'}}

Answer 3

Ok, problem solved. It ends up in 2 lines code:

JsConfig<DateTime>.SerializeFn = dt => dt.ToString("s");
JsConfig<DateTime?>.SerializeFn = dt => dt.HasValue ? dt.Value.ToString("s") : "null";