Serializing DateTime to time without milliseconds and gmt

Question

I have created a C# class file by using a XSD-file as an input. One of my properties look like this:

 private System.DateTime timeField;

 [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute(DataType="time")]
 public System.DateTime Time {
     get {
         return this.timeField;
     }
     set {
         this.timeField = value;
     }
 }

When serialized, the contents of the file now looks like this:

<Time>14:04:02.1661975+02:00</Time>

Is it possible, with XmlAttributes on the property, to have it render without the milliseconds and the GMT-value like this?

<Time>14:04:02</Time>

Is this possible, or do i need to hack together some sort of xsl/xpath-replace-magic after the class has been serialized?

It is not a solution to changing the object to String, because it is used like a DateTime in the rest of the application and allows us to create an xml-representation from an object by using the XmlSerializer.Serialize() method.

The reason I need to remove the extra info from the field is that the receiving system does not conform to the w3c-standards for the time datatype.

Look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3534525/force-xmlserializer-to-serialize-datetime-as-yyyy-mm-dd-hhmmss — TNT, Jan 13 '17 at 14:16

Matt Howells · Answer 1 · 2010-03-12T21:27:58.143

24

Put [XmlIgnore] on the Time property.

Then add a new property:

[XmlElement(DataType="string",ElementName="Time")]
public String TimeString
{
    get { return this.timeField.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd"); }
    set { this.timeField = DateTime.ParseExact(value, "yyyy-MM-dd", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); }
}

edited Mar 12 '10 at 21:27

answered Sep 19 '08 at 13:04

Matt Howells

40,310
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2

Is `"yyyy-MM-dd"` the correct format string for a time field? While this solution didn't work for me out of the box, it did lead me to one that did. I had to use `"HH:mm:ss"`, and I sourced from my `dateField` like this `get { return this.dateField.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); }` – OutstandingBill May 18 '17 at 04:27
Same goes for Uri data type as well. That was my problem, and this is how I fixed it. [JsonIgnore] [XmlIgnore] public Uri UrlIgnore { get; set; } [JsonProperty("url")] [XmlElement] public string Url { get { return Convert.ToString(UrlIgnore); } set { UrlIgnore = new Uri(value); } } – fluidguid Nov 01 '18 at 20:40

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 19 '08 at 12:52

14

You could create a string property that does the translation to/from your timeField field and put the serialization attribute on that instead the the real DateTime property that the rest of the application uses.

answered Sep 19 '08 at 12:52

Jeffrey L Whitledge

58,241
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I had to do exactly the same today :) – leppie Sep 19 '08 at 12:53
Will this also work if we later need to deserialize the same file? – Espo Sep 19 '08 at 13:01
That is how i solved it. Which I could accept both answers, but Jeffrey was first. The best I can do is an upvote :) – Espo Sep 19 '08 at 13:19
if your XSD isn't going to change, I think this is the easiest solution. – parameter Jul 31 '19 at 15:17

Serializing DateTime to time without milliseconds and gmt

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