Force XmlSerializer to serialize DateTime as 'YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss'

user_275449 0
Viewed 108263

I have a XSD schema for some RESTful service. When used in conjunction with xsd.exe tool to generate C# code, XSD's xs:date generates the following code:

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute(Form=System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Unqualified, DataType="date")]
public System.DateTime time {
    get {
        return this.timeField;
    }
    set {
        this.timeField = value;
    }
}

When deserializing XML to objects using XmlSerializer all seems to be well. The problem I am facing is that the service expects dates to be formatted as YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss and the XSD generated code seems to produce only YYYY-MM-DD.

If I modify XSD manually to xs:dateTime type, the generated C# code produces: 2010-08-20T20:07:03.915039Z.

Basically, how do I force serialization to produce YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss? Is there something to do to XSD or is there something I can do to alter generated C# code?

xml-serialization .net c#
6 Answers

see answers above but to add-- if you only wanted output when the value is non-null (e.g. XML maxOccurs=0) you can utilize something like this:

private System.DateTime? someDateField;

public string someDate
{
    get
    {
        return someDateField?.ToString("MM-dd-yyyy");
    }
    set
    {
        dobField = System.DateTime.Parse(value);
    }
}
user_78336670

I may have another option. When setting your DateTime just subtract the number of ticks of everything after the seconds, like:

    public DateTime Dt
        {
        get => _dt;
        set
            {
            _dt = value;
            long elapsedTicks = _dt.Ticks - new DateTime(_dt.Year, _dt.Month, _dt.Day, _dt.Hour, _dt.Minute, _dt.Second).Ticks;
            TimeSpan elapsedSpan = new TimeSpan(elapsedTicks);
            _dt = _dt.Subtract(elapsedSpan);
            }
        }
private DateTime _dt = default(DateTime);

That way when you serialize your DateTime (Dt) the milliseconds won't be used and you'll have a value hh:mm:ss, that is at least what it gave me. That way no need to modify anything inside your XML definition.

user_130180130
Related