Question

So, I have a basic HTML page using jQuery 1.6.2 and I have an MVC application that serves data on a separate domain (The HTML page is local, the MVC application is not). The MVC application is sending back a JSON string just fine; the problem is that when sending back dates, there are a “/” before and after the date which breaks the JSON string, which in turn does not get turned into a javascript object. Phew.

Here is my AJAX call:

$.ajax({ 
  url:url,
  dataType: 'jsonp',
  success: function(data, status, jqXHR) {
    alert(data);
  },
  error: function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
    console.log(jqXHR); console.log(textStatus); console.log(errorThrown);
  }
});

Using the “network” tab in the Chrome profiler, I can see that a JSON string is being returned, and it has the correct data, but has some malformed syntax. Here is a sample of that:

"DateAuthorized":"\/Date(1307789505000-0500)\/",

I tried to use dataType “text”, but because this is a cross-domain request, I have to use jsonp.

Any ideas what-so-ever? Can the MVC application use a regex to remove the slashes? Is there a way to use javascript XHttpRequest to build a manual request?

Agh!

Answer 1

It’s using the default serializer which is the JavaScriptSerializer which has always had this issue. An alternative is to use JSON.NET to serialize your objects.

You can always implement a replacement from the client-side — parseJSON extension

…Or format it from the server-side like this before sending it back:

return new DateTime(2012, 4, 19).ToLongDateString(); // or ToShortDateString()