JToken: Get raw/original JSON value

You cannot get the original string, date strings are recognized and converted to DateTime structs inside the JsonReader itself. You can see this if you do:

Console.WriteLine(((JValue)data["SimpleDate"]).Value.GetType()); // Prints System.DateTime

You can, however, extract the dates in ISO 8601 format by doing:

var value = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(data["SimpleDate"]);
// value is "2012-05-18T00:00:00Z"

This will always output a JValue in a JSON-appropriate string format. Since your original dates are in this format, this may meet your needs.

(Honestly, I'm surprised JValue.ToString() outputs dates in non-ISO format, given that JObject.ToString() does output contained dates in ISO format.)

If you were able to change you settings while reading your JObject, you could use JsonSerializerSettings.DateParseHandling = DateParseHandling.None to disable DateTime recognition:

var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings { DateParseHandling = DateParseHandling.None };
var data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<JObject>(@"{
    ""SimpleDate"":""2012-05-18T00:00:00Z"",
    ""PatternDate"":""2012-11-07T00:00:00Z""
}", settings);

var value = data["SimpleDate"].Value<string>();

Debug.WriteLine(value); // Outputs 2012-05-18T00:00:00Z

There's no overload to JObject.Parse() that takes a JsonSerializerSettings, so use DeserializeObject. This setting eventually gets propagated to JsonReader.DateParseHandling.

Related Newtonsoft docs:

• Json.NET interprets and modifies ISO dates when deserializing to JObject #862
• Serializing Dates in JSON.

There's a solution I found in Json.NET Disable the deserialization on DateTime:

JsonReader reader = new JsonTextReader(new StringReader(j1.ToString()));
reader.DateParseHandling = DateParseHandling.None;
JObject o = JObject.Load(reader);