What is the “right” JSON date format?

Question

I\'ve seen so many different standards for the JSON date format:

\"\\\"\\\\/Date(1335205592410)\\\\/\\\"\"         .NET JavaScriptSerializer
\"\\\"\\\\/Date(         


        

Answer 1

There is no right format; The JSON specification does not specify a format for exchanging dates which is why there are so many different ways to do it.

The best format is arguably a date represented in ISO 8601 format (see Wikipedia); it is a well known and widely used format and can be handled across many different languages, making it very well suited for interoperability. If you have control over the generated json, for example, you provide data to other systems in json format, choosing 8601 as the date interchange format is a good choice.

If you do not have control over the generated json, for example, you are the consumer of json from several different existing systems, the best way of handling this is to have a date parsing utility function to handle the different formats expected.