ASP.NET MVC Json DateTime Serialization conversion to UTC

asp.net-mvc, asp.net-mvc-3, datetime, json, json.net

Solution

Dammit, it seems that lately I'm destined to answer my own questions here at StackOverflow. Sigh, here is the solution:

- Install ServiceStack.Text using NuGet - you'll get faster JSON serialization for free (you're welcome)

Once ServiceStack.Text is installed, just override Json method in your base Controller (you do have one, right?):

protected override JsonResult Json(object data, string contentType, Encoding contentEncoding, JsonRequestBehavior behavior)
{
    return new ServiceStackJsonResult
    {
        Data = data,
        ContentType = contentType,
        ContentEncoding = contentEncoding
    };
}

public class ServiceStackJsonResult : JsonResult
{
    public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
    {
        HttpResponseBase response = context.HttpContext.Response;
        response.ContentType = !String.IsNullOrEmpty(ContentType) ? ContentType : "application/json";

        if (ContentEncoding != null)
        {
            response.ContentEncoding = ContentEncoding;
        }

        if (Data != null)
        {
            response.Write(JsonSerializer.SerializeToString(Data));
        }
    }
}

It seems that this serializer by default does "the right thing" - it doesn't mess with your DateTime objects if their DateTime.Kind is Unspecified. However, I did few additional config tweaks in Global.asax (and it's good to know how to do that before you start using library):

protected void Application_Start()
{
    JsConfig.DateHandler = JsonDateHandler.ISO8601;
    JsConfig.TreatEnumAsInteger = true;

    // rest of the method...
}

This link helped

Problem

Using Json() method on ASP.NET MVC Controller is giving me trouble - every DateTime thrown in this method is converted to UTC using server time. Now, is there an easy way to tell ASP.NET MVC Json Serializer to stop auto-converting DateTime to UTC? As it is noted on this question reasigning each of your variable with DateTime.SpecifyKind(date, DateTimeKind.Utc) does the trick, but obviously I can't do this manually on every DateTime variable. So is it possible to set something in Web.config and have JSON serializer treat EVERY date as if it's UTC?

Original source