Serialized XML Date Time value is not correct

Question

I have an issue with Serializing XML. I have an object with a DateTime property where the millisecond value is 990. However when I view the outputted string it is showing like this...

<ReadingsDateTime>2016-07-04T10:10:00.99Z</ReadingsDateTime>

The code used to convert this to xml is below, what is going on, I can not find a reason that this is happening.

string xml;

try
{    
    var serializer = new XmlSerializerFactory().CreateSerializer(typeof(T), xmlNamespace);

    using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())
    {
        var settings = new XmlWriterSettings
        {
            Indent = false,
            NamespaceHandling = NamespaceHandling.OmitDuplicates,
            CloseOutput = false,
            WriteEndDocumentOnClose = true,
        };

        using (var xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(memoryStream, settings))
        {
            serializer?.Serialize(xmlWriter, obj);
        }

        memoryStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

        using (var steamReader = new StreamReader(memoryStream))
        {
            xml = steamReader.ReadToEnd();
        }
    }
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    throw new ApplicationException("Unable to convert to XML from an object", ex);
}

return xml;

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

3

.990 is the same as .99, its a fractional number so the last 0 digit is dropped. Digits have importance starting from the left hand side and going to the right. Example:

1.0000 is the same value as 1
2.94 is the same value as 2.940 or 2.9400 or 2.94000.

The serializer just removes the trailing 0 digits. If you want to always capture any trailing 0 digits (not sure why you would) you can add a custom string property and specify the exact output to be serialized and read in there and ignore the DateTime property, see this previous SO post as example.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

Community

1
1

answered Jul 22 '16 at 10:39

Igor

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Is this a .Net specific 'thing'. The xml is created to post to an Api. If that system was Java would they treat the millisecond part as a fractional number as well? – Geek Jul 22 '16 at 10:53
2

@Hyder - its not anything specific to .net but that is just how the `XmlSerializer` serializes the fractionalal part of the millisecond value which makes sense as the trailing `0`s do not add anything of value. The result could be different depending on the serializer user and who wrote it but the string/serialized value should be able to be parsed/deserialized back to the same DateTime value either way. As far as Java I would guess it was the same but I do not know Java so could not say for sure. – Igor Jul 22 '16 at 11:01

Serialized XML Date Time value is not correct

1 Answers1