com.overset.dev» Blog Archive » LitJson Patch To Serialize Hashtable/IDictionary Keys of DateTime Type to JSON

4.24.08

LitJson Patch To Serialize Hashtable/IDictionary Keys of DateTime Type to JSON

LitJson is great - lightweight, fast, easy to incorporate, etc. Thanks Leonard Boshell!

I actually found the need to serialize Hashtables to a JSON string that contained Keys that were of the DateTime datatype. LitJson 0.5.0 assumes that the Keys of Hashtable or IDictionary can be cast into a string by default. The DateTime object cannot be CAST into a string, but it can be converted into a string using Convert or ToString().

Case in point - I want to convert:
DateTime currDate = new DateTime(); Hashtable dateTest = new Hashtable(); dateTest.Add(currDate, "random value");
to be able to serialize as (with the default DateTime format):
{"4/24/2008 12:00:00 AM":"random Value"}

Here’s a simple patch to the JsonMapper.cs file:

--- JsonMapper.cs       24 Apr 2008 23:16:16 -0000      1.1

+++ JsonMapper.cs       24 Apr 2008 23:16:54 -0000

@@ -739,7 +739,11 @@

             if (obj is IDictionary) {

                 writer.WriteObjectStart ();

                 foreach (DictionaryEntry entry in (IDictionary) obj) {

-                    writer.WritePropertyName ((string) entry.Key);

+                       if (entry.Key is DateTime)

+                           writer.WritePropertyName ( entry.Key.ToString() );

+                    else

+                           writer.WritePropertyName ((string) entry.Key);

+

                     WriteValue (entry.Value, writer, writer_is_private,

                                 depth + 1);

                 }

Download this code: JsonMapper.cs.qwnu.diff

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