Question

The DateTimeOffset property I have in this class doesn’t get rendered when the data is represented as Xml. What do I need to do to tell the Xml serialization to render that proper as a DateTime or DateTimeOffset?

[XmlRoot("playersConnected")]
public class PlayersConnectedViewData
{
    [XmlElement("playerConnected")]
    public PlayersConnectedItem[] playersConnected { get; set; }
}

[XmlRoot("playersConnected")]
public class PlayersConnectedItem
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public DateTimeOffset connectedOn { get; set; }  // <-- This property fails.
    public string server { get; set; }
    public string gameType { get; set; }
}

and some sample data…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<playersConnected 
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <playerConnected>
    <name>jollyroger1000</name>
    <connectedOn />
    <server>log1</server>
    <gameType>Battlefield 2</gameType>
  </playerConnected>
</playersConnected>

Update

I’m hoping there might be a way through an Attribute which I can decorate on the property…

Bonus Question

Any way to get rid of those two namespaces declared in the root node? Should I?

Answer 1

I’ve ended up just doing this…

Added the two extension methods …

public static double ToUnixEpoch(this DateTimeOffset value)
{
    // Create Timespan by subtracting the value provided from 
    //the Unix Epoch then return the total seconds (which is a UNIX timestamp)
    return (double)((value - new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0)
        .ToLocalTime())).TotalSeconds;
}

public static string ToJsonString(this DateTimeOffset value)
{
    return string.Format("\\/Date({0})\\/", value.ToUnixEpoch());
}

Modified the ViewData class…

[XmlRoot("playersConnected")]
public class PlayersConnectedItem
{
    public string name { get; set; }
    public string connectedOn { get; set; }
    public string server { get; set; }
    public string gameType { get; set; }
}

Changed how I set the viewdata properties…

var data = (from q in connectedPlayerLogEntries
            select new PlayersConnectedItem
                       {
                           name = q.ClientName,
                           connectedOn =  q.CreatedOn.ToJsonString(),
                           server = q.GameFile.UniqueName,
                           gameType = q.GameFile.GameType.Description()
                        });

Done. Not sure if that’s the best way .. but now that viewdata property has the same values for either Json or Xml.