POSTing a DateTime from Android to a WCF RESTful JSON Service

Question

I\'m trying to send a DateTime as a parameter to a method exposed over a WCF RESTful service with JSON encoding. The request looks like this:

POST h         


        

Answer 1

I have to update the answer to this question, I needed to do the same and I used the accepted answer but the obtained Date was wrong, It was giving me a Date of a week before (Don't know why). I don't know much about the Date type of Java but I know some of their methods has been deprecated.

Being said that I think this is the most recent correct answer for this situation. Hope helps Someone else

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;
import java.util.TimeZone;

.....

    final Calendar cal = GregorianCalendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));        
    cal.setTime(value); // Where Value is a Date
    final long date = cal.getTime().getTime();
    final String senddate = "/Date("+date+")/";

Note the use of Date with the Uppercase "D", this is also needed because it causes problems with the WCF (at least on my case, was stuck a lot just for the lowercase D)

I'm using it to consume a RESTful WCF with Jackson Library for JSON.

To add a complete answer it can be used this Way for a Date that you want to be serialized with jackson.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;
import java.util.TimeZone;

import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonGenerationException;
import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonGenerator;
import org.codehaus.jackson.annotate.JsonCreator;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializerProvider;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ser.std.SerializerBase;

/**
 * @author HECTOR
 *
 */
public class SerializeRESTDate extends SerializerBase {

    public SerializeRESTDate() {
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
        this(Date.class);
    }

    @JsonCreator
    protected SerializeRESTDate(Class t) {
        super(t);
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
    }



    @Override
    public void serialize(Date value, JsonGenerator jgen,
            SerializerProvider provider) throws IOException,
            JsonGenerationException {


        final Calendar cal = GregorianCalendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));            
        cal.setTime(value);
        final long date = cal.getTime().getTime();
        final String senddate = "/Date("+date+")/";
        jgen.writeString(senddate);

    }



}

And use it like this in your class'property definition

@JsonSerialize(using = SerializeRESTDate.class)
    @JsonProperty("InspectionDate")
    /**
     * @return the _InspectionDate
     */
    public Date get_InspectionDate() {
        return _InspectionDate;
    }