Force XmlSerializer to serialize DateTime as 'YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss'
In the past, I've done the following to control datetime serialization:
- Ignore the DateTime property.
- Create a dummy string property that serializes/deserializes the way I want
Here is an example:
public class SomeClass
{
[XmlIgnore]
public DateTime SomeDate { get; set; }
[XmlElement("SomeDate")]
public string SomeDateString
{
get { return this.SomeDate.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"); }
set { this.SomeDate = DateTime.Parse(value); }
}
}
Use [XmlElement(DataType = "date")]
attribute to format your DateTime
property value as you need.
From MSDN:
Note:
The attribute that annotates the publicationdate field has a DataType property. There is no type in the .NET Framework that matches the type xs:date completely. The closest match is System.DateTime, which stores date and time data. Specifying the DataType property as a "date" ensures that the XmlSerializer will only serialize the date part of the DateTime object.
If you only need to clear out the millisecond part. Refer to:
How to truncate milliseconds off of a .NET DateTime
And basicly do something like:
startDateTimeToUse = startDateTimeToUse.AddTicks(-(startDateTimeToUse.Ticks % TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond));
endDate = endDate.AddTicks(-(endDate.Ticks % TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond));
I can confirm that this serializes to:
<startDate>2015-10-31T12:13:04</startDate>
<endDate>2016-11-10T12:13:06</endDate>
I must also state that Before clearing the milliseconds I'm doing this:
var startDateTimeToUse = ssStartDateTime.ToUniversalTime();
var endDate = DateTime.Now.ToUniversalTime();
startDateTimeToUse = DateTime.SpecifyKind(startDateTimeToUse, DateTimeKind.Unspecified);
endDate = DateTime.SpecifyKind(endDate, DateTimeKind.Unspecified);
Which I don't know if it's having any effect on the serialization or not at this point