I have a list of objects that I de-serialized from a json string that have a start/end time field expressed in UTC time. Eg: "2016-08-22T15:30:00Z" (which is 11:30AM EST). I need to transform the time to a user-friendly format (e.g, "11:30 AM") on the server before sending down the list in JSON for displaying on a web page. Is there a c# function that will help me accomplish this transform the time property to the desired result?
code example:
public class Event
{
public int EventId { get; set; } //1
public string Name { get; set; } //Karate class
public string StartAt { get; set; } //2016-08-22T15:30:00Z
public string EndAt { get; set; } //2016-08-22T16:30:00Z
}
public class Events
{
public List<Event> Events {get; set;}
}
//de-serialize from json string
string eventsForToday = "{}" //some json string from api
var eventList = (Events)JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(eventsForToday, typeof(Events));
foreach (var item in eventList.Events)
{
//needs to be 11:30AM instead of 2016-08-22T15:30:00Z
Console.WriteLine (item.StartAt)
}
I know that the logic is whatever the UTC time is it should be offset by 4 (or 5 depending on time of year). But what is the most straight-forward way to modify the objects? Is there a way to project a new list with the format changed, etc?
You can convert each string into a DateTime. DateTime has a method ToLocalTime() that will do the conversion for you as long as you specify the Kind property of the DateTime. For example,
foreach (var item in eventList.Events)
{
DateTime timeUtc = DateTime.SpecifyKind(DateTime.Parse(item.StartAt), DateTimeKind.Utc);
Console.WriteLine (timeUtc.ToLocalTime()); //Add .ToShortTimeString() if you just want the time (and not the date)
}
However, since your string has a trailing "Z", you should just be able to use Convert.ToDateTime(item.StartAt).ToWhateverString()
Related
I have a Business Object (Domain Object) representing an employee's shift timings. Its name is EmployeeWorkShift.
using System;
namespace BusinessObjects
{
public class EmployeeWorkShift
{
public long EmployeeWorkShiftId { get; set; }
public long EmployeeId { get; set; }
public DateTime StartDate { get; set; }
public DateTime EndDate { get; set; }
public TimeSpan StartTime { get; set; }
public TimeSpan EndTime { get; set; }
}
}
I have a Repository to create, read, update and delete this Business Object in database. Its name is IEmployeeWorkShiftRepository.
I have a Service which has methods to perform operations with this Business Object. Its name is IEmployeeWorkShiftService.
The User Interface call the Service methods for different events:
To retrieve all EmployeeWorkShift objects of an employee, it calls List<EmployeeWorkShift> GetEmployeeWorkShifts(long employeeId); method
To retrieve a specific EmployeeWorkShift object, it calls EmployeeWorkShift GetEmployeeWorkShift(long employeeWorkShiftId); method
To insert a specific EmployeeWorkShift object, it calls EmployeeWorkShift InsertEmployeeWorkShift(EmployeeWorkShift employeeWorkShift); method
To update a specific EmployeeWorkShift object, it calls EmployeeWorkShift UpdateEmployeeWorkShift(EmployeeWorkShift employeeWorkShift); method
To delete a specific EmployeeWorkShift object, it calls void DeleteEmployeeWorkShift(EmployeeWorkShift employeeWorkShift); method
Now in the User Interface, for retrieve/insert/update, the user wants to use some specific formats for dates and times of EmployeeWorkShift object.
One way to solve this issues, is to add 4 string properties in EmployeeWorkShift object which contains the dates and times in specific formats user desires:
using System;
namespace BusinessObjects
{
public class EmployeeWorkShift
{
public long EmployeeWorkShiftId { get; set; }
public long EmployeeId { get; set; }
public DateTime StartDate { get; set; }
public DateTime EndDate { get; set; }
public TimeSpan StartTime { get; set; }
public TimeSpan EndTime { get; set; }
public string StartDateString { get; set; }
public string EndDateString { get; set; }
public string StartTimeString { get; set; }
public string EndTimeString { get; set; }
}
}
So in User Interface I don't use the original 4 properties of dates and times and instead use the new 4 string properties.
In Service method for retrieve, once I get data from Repository, I translate the original 4 properties of dates and times retrieved from database into specific formats and populate the new 4 string properties.
In Service method for insert/update, I translate the new 4 string properties into original 4 properties of dates and times before calling Repository.
This looks a crude solution to me. Is there a better way to solve this issue?
In my view, formatting Dates for display purposes is a presentation concern, not a business logic concern. I would imagine also that the formatting for dates affects all dates that the user sees, not only the dates related EmployeeWorkShift, so your approach would require extending every single entity which contains dates with the string property and applying the logic everywhere.
What I would do is have the business objects working with DateTime only both for reads and writes. Then in the presentation layer I would have a DateTime formatter which would accept the DateTime and a Format parameter. The Format parameter could be retrieved from User settings or obtained from the selected Culture for example.
So, you'd have the concerns separated into 3 parts:
Business logic works with DateTimes always. This will simplify the business logic layer and avoid mistakes
A single Formatter function to format any DateTime for display regardless of the business object it belongs to (you'll need a Parser function too).
A single way to retrieve the format, decoupled from all business objects and dates presented in the UI, so you can easily replace how you obtain it (combo box on the page, from the Culture in the browser or system, from user settings, etc).
It is possible to create one field which will store format of your DateTime or TimeSpan. By using this property you can format your value for presentation layer. Let's call this property as DateFormat.
Then at runtime you can decide what formatter should be used to format your value. It can be done through Strategy pattern. Strategies of formatting will be stored in collection and you can get instance of strategy by using Factory pattern.
So let's see an example of implementation. This is property DateFormat:
public enum DateFormat
{
Date, Time
}
And your class EmployeeWorkShift:
public class EmployeeWorkShift
{
// the other code is omitted for the brevity
public DateFormat DateFormat { get; set; }
public string StartDate { get; set; }
public string EndDate { get; set; }
// the other code is omitted for the brevity
}
And then you can create abstract class DateFormatter which will define behaviour for all derived classes.
These derived classes will format values:
public abstract class DateFormatter
{
public abstract string Format(string dateTime);
}
public class DateTimeFormatter : DateFormatter
{
public override string Format(string dateTime) =>
DateTime.Parse(dateTime).ToString();
}
public class TimeSpanFormatter : DateFormatter
{
public override string Format(string dateTime) =>
TimeSpan.Parse(dateTime).ToString();
}
And we need a factory which will return instance of formatter by DateFormat:
public class DateFormatFactory
{
private Dictionary<DateFormat, DateFormatter> _formattersByDateFormat =
new Dictionary<DateFormat, DateFormatter>()
{
{ DateFormat.Date, new DateTimeFormatter() },
{ DateFormat.Time, new TimeSpanFormatter() }
};
public DateFormatter GetInstance(DateFormat dateFormat) =>
_formattersByDateFormat[dateFormat];
}
And this is a mock method of getting shifts:
IEnumerable<EmployeeWorkShift> GetShifts() => new List<EmployeeWorkShift>
{
new EmployeeWorkShift { DateFormat = DateFormat.Date, StartDate="2022-12-25" },
new EmployeeWorkShift { DateFormat = DateFormat.Time, StartDate="6:12:14:45" }
};
And another method to show formatted values:
void ShowFormattedValues()
{
DateFormatter dateFormatter;
DateFormatFactory dateFormatFactory = new DateFormatFactory();
foreach (EmployeeWorkShift shift in GetShifts())
{
dateFormatter = dateFormatFactory.GetInstance(shift.DateFormat);
Console.WriteLine("formatted value: "
+ dateFormatter.Format(shift.StartDate));
}
}
And you can call it like this:
ShowFormattedValues();
So we are getting strategy to format values based on DateFormat property. And the pattern name is Strategy.
So our code follows Open Closed principle of SOLID principles. When you will want to add new strategy of formatting you will need a new class of FooFormatter.
In addition, there is no need to write twice name in method and service. You can have:
public interface IEmployeeWorkShiftRepository
{
string GetById();
string GetByShiftId();
void Insert();
void Update();
void Delete();
}
and call it like this:
employeeWorkShiftRepository.GetById(); //
I'm trying to parse DateTime as Json to MongoDB.
This is my Post Request via Json :
{
"birthdate": "2022-05-19T19:27:44.952Z"
}
This is the part of my C# class:
public DateTime Birthdate { get; set; }
However in the MongoDB it is stored like this:
0001-01-01T00:00:00.000+00:00
But this works:
public DateTime Birthdate { get; set; } = DateTime.Now
however I want to store a custom DateTime
There’s not really enough information here to give a complete answer, but in the console you would need to wrap the string in an ISODate.
{
"birthdate": new ISODate("2022-05-19T19:27:44.952Z")
}
See:
https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/reference/method/Date/
This question already has answers here:
Deserializing dates with dd/MM/yyyy format using Json.Net
(9 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
I have this Json from a web api:
jsonstring ={"users":[{"id":1123,"last_update":"2016-02-28 14:53:04"}],"page":1,"pages":1}
which I want to deserialize in an object like:
public class Rootobject
{
public User[] users { get; set; }
public int page { get; set; }
public int pages { get; set; }
}
public class User
{
public int id { get; set; }
public DateTime last_update { get; set; }
}
for this I use:
var obj= JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Rootobject>(jsonString);
the result has null for last_update.
jsonstring is a string result from WebClient.DownloadString(url); which look like above example.
How can I get the date on deserialization?
Edit:
None of the solutions from this post Deserializing dates with dd/mm/yyyy format using Json.Net help me fix my issue.
var obj = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Rootobject>(jsonString,
new IsoDateTimeConverter { DateTimeFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" });
Fiddle
Change the property last_update as Nullable, Then it allows you to assign the null literal to the DateTime type. It provides another level of indirection. So use like the following:
public DateTime? last_update { get; set; }
This is for accepting The date even if it is null, you can specify the Date format While Deserializing the JSON. Use this Thread for that
"2016-02-28 14:53:04" is not a valid RFC3339 date time, and I think it can't parse it because of that.
It has to be:
2016-02-28T14:53:04
Also note that the can't be null, since DateTime is a struct. To make it nullable, make the data type DateTime? which does allow null values.
I have an employee model:
public class Employee
{
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
...
public DateTime TerminationDate{ get; set; }
}
The model is populated automatically (by HttpResponseMessage's Content.ReadAsAsync<Employee>())
The default value for TerminationDate (when the employee is still with the company) is 0000-00-00, which can't be converted to a DateTime object, presumably because there is not 0th day or month. I get the error:
Could not convert string to DateTime: 0000-00-00. Path 'terminationDate', line 1, position 533.
The default date value can't be changed - I'm getting that from a 3rd party service.
The only workaround that I can think of is to set the TerminationDate to be a string, but then everything that gets the TerminationDate will have to parse it into a DateTime object.
Is there anything more elegant that I could do?
I would suggest making the termination date to be nullable.
public DateTime? TerminationDate{ get; set; }
Since current employees don't have a TerminationDate, it would be reasonable to leave it as null.
I kinda confuse about the date time conversion
in my model i have defined
public DateTime? Sent { get; set; }
public DateTime? Reply { get; set; }
public double ResponseTime { get; set; }
in linq part i am using
ResponseTime = (u.Reply - u.sent).TotalMilliseconds
which is not formated and displayed like this 979809803
I want to know how do i convert it to datetime format, and eventually will display the format as hour:minute, for instance 2:45 between the date sent and date reply.
Just return the TimeSpan and call .ToString("hh:mm").
TimeSpan.ToString
public TimeSpan ResponseTime { get; set; }
//usage in LINQ
ResponseTime = (u.Reply - u.Sent)
When displaying...
value.ResponseTime.ToString("hh:mm")
Subtracting a DateTime from a DateTime yields a TimeSpan. Have a look at the TimeSpan.ToString Method (String) to see how you can custom format the value.
You can change ResponseTime back to a TimeSpan and from there to a string.
TimeSpan ResponseTimeSpan = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, (int)ResponseTime);
string ResponseTimeDisplay = ResponseTimeSpan.ToString();