CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#datetimeasp.net-web-apiutc
Gianluca Ghettini
Gianluca Ghettini

Reputation: 11658

UTC timezone in the OK() function in .NET WebAPI C#

I have a .NET WebAPI which returns some dates as JSON. I'm using the Ok() function which takes the C# DateTime list and convert them into a JSON array.

My requirement is to specify the timezone in any case (even +00:00)

Now, the format I'm using is:

jsonSerializerSettings.DateFormatString = "o";

which uses the ISO standard and a "Z" to specify UTC.

Unfortunately my web application doesn't understand such convention (I mean, the final "Z") and it requires a timezone offset to be present in any case. In other words, I'd like to use a "+00:00" instead of the "Z".

How can I tell WebAPI to use such convention?

Previously I had:

jsonSerializerSettings.DateFormatString = "yyyy'-'MM'-'dd'T'HH':'mm':'ss.fffzzz";

which doesn't had the timezone information.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1689

Answers (2)

Igor
Igor

Reputation: 62298

Use System.DateTimeOffset instead of Use System.DateTime in your return statement (Ok). This will automatically append the +00:00 the the serialized string (+00:00 is assuming its a UTC point in time).

for Web API 2 and higher, I am not sure about previous versions

This is also the default date/time format for other Web API extensions like oData.

Upvotes: 0

Tomas Aschan
Tomas Aschan

Reputation: 60674

This is not as easy as one would like - mainly, because the DateTime type is confusing at its best, and wrong at its worst.

I would recommend handling only UTC dates on the server (i.e. assuming UTC on any incoming date, saving everything as UTC and returning UTC everywhere) and letting your clients decide if they need to do something about that (e.g. convert to a local time for correct display). Then, it could be as easy as setting

jsonSerializerSettings.DateFormatString = "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fff+00:00";

i.e. hard-coding the +00:00 there, since you know (by assumption) that it's going to be UTC.

Upvotes: 3

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