Question

I know this question has been asked many times here, but no answer has provided me with a solution yet. Please help, I’m beating my head against the wall.

Problem:
I have a simple ASP.NET web forms app with one page – Default.aspx. This page has jQuery, JSON2, Rick Strahl’s ServiceProxy.js, and my javascript file referenced (timezone.js). In the same project I have a WCF service that I call from timezone.js using ServiceProxy (which is a convenient wrapper around jQuery’s .ajax POST). The call should return an object that has a DateTime property. I am testing on two client machines in different time zones and getting different results.
Here are the screenshots of the app hosted is IIS:

EDIT: Looks like StackOverflow isn’t letting me post images. Here is the rendered text…

On the GMT machine I get:
Date rendered by js from WCF call: Fri Sep 28 13:30:00 UTC+0100 2012

On the Eastern Standard Time machine I get: Date rendered by js from WCF call:
Fri Sep 28 08:30:00 EDT 2012

As you can see on the right side of both screenshots, the WCF call results in different times.

I want complete control over what dates are sent back and I’m this close to converting it to a string on the server and parsing the string in javascript. I also must use POST to a WCF Enabled Ajax Service.

Here is the code behind for Default.aspx

public class DateContainerObject
{
    public DateTime theDate { get; set; }
}

public static class DateMaker
{
    public static DateContainerObject MakeDateObj()
    {
        DateContainerObject obj = new DateContainerObject();
        DateTime origUTCDate = new DateTime(2012, 9, 28, 13, 30, 0);
        DateTime newKindDate = DateTime.SpecifyKind(origUTCDate, DateTimeKind.Unspecified);
        obj.theDate = newKindDate;

        return obj;
    }
}

public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Literal1.Text = DateMaker.MakeDateObj().theDate.ToString();
    }
}

Here is the WCF Service code:

[ServiceContract(Namespace = "")]
[AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)]
public class TimeZoneService
{
    [OperationContract]
    public DateContainerObject GetDateObject()
    {
        return DateMaker.MakeDateObj();
    }
}

This is the timezone.js code:

$(function () {

var dObj = {};
var proxy = new ServiceProxy("/TimeZoneService.svc/", { isWcf: true });
proxy.invoke("GetDateObject",
        dObj,
        function (result) {
            $('#spanDateJSRender').text(result.theDate);
        },
        function (e) {
            alert(e);
        },
        function () { },
        false
        );

});

I’ve tried specifying the DateTimeKind to all different values, but it doesn’t give me accurate date and time. I’ve also tried using DateTimeOffset and I get the same results.
What can I do with this example to get the exact DateTimes that are created on the server to render in the browser?
Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Just to wrap this up. I’m converting my DateTime objects to strings and having JavaScript parse them on the client. This doesn’t feel too good, but it works.