ASP.NET MVC Controller.Json DateTime Serialization vs NewtonSoft Json DateTime Serialization

Question

When I return object that contains DateTime property using

return Json(value);

on client I receive

"/Date(1336618438854)/"

If i return the same value using

return Json(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(value));

then the returned serialized value (together with serialized object) is time zone aware:

"/Date(1336618438854-0400)/"

Is there any way to get consistent DateTime result without without double serialization? I read somewhere that MS will include Newtonsoft JSON into MVC?

Solution

I finally figured out what to do.
I will switch my project to ISO 8601 DateTime format. Serialization is done nicely with JSON.net, just by decorating the datetime property on the object with JsonConverter attribute.

    public class ComplexObject 
    {
        [JsonProperty]
        public string ModifiedBy { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty]
        [JsonConverter(typeof(IsoDateTimeConverter))]
        public DateTime Modified { get; set; }
        ...
     }

To return serialized object to the client ajax call I can do:

    return Json(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(complexObjectInstance));

and on the client:

    jsObject = JSON.parse(result)

Now I am thinking it would be probably simple to override default ASP.NET MVC default JSON serializer to us Newtonsoft JSON.net ISO 8601 serialization, and yes principle should be similar to this thread: Change Default JSON Serializer Used In ASP MVC3.

Comments

[user1188755]

Sorry, but this post is not about showing dates. It is about consistency in serialized date format for complex objects containing DateTime properties in server to client and client to server scenarios. And what you are suggesting I am doing in the 2nd line with SerializeObject for the whole object.

[alok_dida]

@user1188755 ... check below this stackoverflow.com/questions/668488/…

[Pete]

Great answer but I found that the Newtonsoft.Json attributes are not necessary. Simply using $.parseJSON(result) will properly parse the dates. stackoverflow.com/a/4540007/752974