I have been working a bit with WCF lately and like everyone else use Json with WCF I ran into some issues with DateTime formats. I kept trying to find a valid solution to this where it outputted a readable value.
Eventually I started outputting the DateTime as a formatted string and this worked, but it meant I have to create new string variables in all of my classes instead of the DateTimes that I already had and was using, but then I still needed the variable in its DateTime form.
So I came up with the WCFDate class, at its heart this class outputs a string in a set format, this allows it to be easily read by what ever needs to. I could then replace all of my DateTimes with WCFDate and all was good in the world.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Globalization;
/// <summary>
/// Class to help get around the craziness of WCF DateTime formats (Use this class instead of DateTime for WebService Models)
/// </summary>
public class WCFDate
{
public static string DateTimeFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss zz";
/// <summary>
/// The Date as a formatted string
/// </summary>
public string Data { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Basic constructor (with no value)
/// </summary>
public WCFDate() { }
/// <summary>
/// String constructor setting a Formatted string for the DateTime
/// </summary>
/// <param name="data"></param>
public WCFDate(string data)
{
Data = data;
}
/// <summary>
/// DateTime constructor, sets the Data to the formatted String from the DateTime
/// </summary>
/// <param name="date"></param>
public WCFDate(DateTime date)
{
Data = date.ToString(DateTimeFormat);
}
/// <summary>
/// DateTime constructor, sets the Data to the formatted String from the DateTime
/// </summary>
/// <param name="date"></param>
public WCFDate(DateTime? date)
{
if (date.HasValue)
{
Data = date.Value.ToString(DateTimeFormat);
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Check if the class is holding a Date or not
/// </summary>
public bool HasDate
{
get
{
return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Data);
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Gets the DateTime the class represents
/// </summary>
/// <returns></returns>
public DateTime GetDate()
{
try
{
return DateTime.ParseExact(Data, DateTimeFormat, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);
}
catch
{
return new DateTime();
}
}
}
Follow the Gist of this class or feel free to add to it.
