ASP.NET Web API Date format in JSON does not serialise successfully

Question

All,

We are using ASP.NET Web API where we have a REST based service with JSON for the payload. If I pass the following Date as a string e.g

sampleObj: {
...
myDate: "31/12/2011 00:00:00",
...
}

as an attribute value in the JSON payload, the date attribute gets deserialised into a DateTime.MinValue. Is the string format valid?

We know the format "2012-10-17 07:45:00" serialises successfully but we cannot guarantee that all dates received will be in this format. What are the valid options?

Answer 1

In ASP.NET Web API, you can add different Json.NET DateTimeConverters through the JsonFormatter's SerializerSettings to make your service understand different DateTime format.

However, I do not think there is a default DateTimeConverter from Json.NET that takes in this format "31/12/2011 00:00:00". In this case you implement your custom DateTimeConverter.

WebApiConfig.cs:

 config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SerializerSettings.Converters.Add(
 new IsoDateTimeConverter());
 config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SerializerSettings.Converters.Add(
 new MyDateTimeConverter());

Custom DateTimeConverter:

public class MyDateTimeConverter : DateTimeConverterBase
{
 //...
} 

For more information about how to write a custom DateTimeConverter, I found something on stackoverflow that you might find useful: How to create a json.net Date to String custom Converter.

• bstack: Thanks for that help. We will not be creating a custom date time converter, I just wanted to confirm that the format was not acceptable by Json.NET by default.

Answer 2

Just set globalization in web.config:

<globalization enableClientBasedCulture="false" requestEncoding="utf-8" responseEncoding="utf-8" culture="en-GB" uiCulture="en-GB"/>

and then, in Global.asax.cs> Application_Start, set JsonFormatter to use the current culture:

var json = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.JsonFormatter;
json.SerializerSettings.Culture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture;