Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
Tested using chrome Canary
I can convert a date to JSON:
> (new Date()).toJSON()
"2012-05-03T22:27:30.530Z"
I can convert it back to a Date:
> typeof (new Date("2012-05-03T22:27:30.530Z"))
object
Why can’t I parse it as a Date using JSON.parse()? JSON.parse returns a string, not a Date:
> JSON.parse('{"DateValue":"2012-05-03T22:27:30.530Z"}').DateValue
"2012-05-03T22:27:30.530Z"
Because a Date is not a valid type in JSON. JSON only knows about strings, numbers, booleans, arrays, and generic objects (associative arrays/hashes/maps/dictionaries/pick-your-favorite-name). When you convert anything else to JSON, you get one of the above – which means if you want to get the “something else” back out as the type it started as, the receiver has to do some extra work to recreate it.
There are JSON libraries that abstract that work away, and include an extra attribute indicating what class something is, so if the receiver is using the same library they’ll get that type back, but that’s still the same work, just hidden by the library.