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Edwin Romero
Asked: 2022-04-13 04:12:22 +0800 CST 2022-04-13 04:12:22 +0800 CST

How to serialize a timespan in API C# Core 3.x or higher

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I had a problem with an API that had time type variables, I connect to a database with a Time field and of course the JSON returns something like "HoraTimeSpan": { "ticks": 0, "days": 0, "hours ": 0, "milliseconds": 0, "minutes": 0, "seconds": 0, "totalDays": 0, "totalHours": 0, "totalMilliseconds": 0, "totalMinutes": 0, "totalSeconds": 0 },

When I want to assign it to a TimeSpan, or use it, it displays the serialization error, at least it happened to me in 3.x and 5 Core, so how can I correct the problem?

c#

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The answer is simple and works for core 3.x and higher and can also be used if you need to serialize other types of data such as geolocation that are also time-type structures. I will do this example with time

    In the api we make a class that allows us to manipulate the time and make it a string so we would have a class similar to this:

    namespace WebApiJWT.Models
{
     public class TimeSpanToStringConverter : JsonConverter<TimeSpan>
     {
          public override TimeSpan Read(ref Utf8JsonReader reader, Type typeToConvert, JsonSerializerOptions options)
          {
               var value = reader.GetString();
               return TimeSpan.Parse(value);
          }


          public override void Write(Utf8JsonWriter writer, TimeSpan value, JsonSerializerOptions options)
          {
               writer.WriteStringValue(value.ToString());
          }
     }
}

    When the json is accessed to send the data, the Json converter detects that it is a TimeSpan type and manipulates it both for reading and writing so that it works in post and get.

    simple now it will only be enough to make the call from the dependency injection, we do that at the start in service

          public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
      {

    There we tell you that when you do the serialization use the class above, how? thus

               services.AddControllers().AddJsonOptions(options =>
                options.JsonSerializerOptions.Converters.Add(new TimeSpanToStringConverter()));

    and that's it

    I publish it because it gave me some headaches and I solved it like this, greetings

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