How to preserve timezone when deserializing DateTime using JSON.NET?

Question

I'm parsing some JSON in C# using JSON.NET. One of the fields in the JSON is a date/time, like this: ``` { "theTime":"2014-11-20T07:15:11-0500", // ... a lot more fields ... } ``` Note that the time part is 07:15:11 (TZ of GMT-5 hrs) I parse the JSON from a stream like this: ``` using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(rcvdStream)) { JsonTextReader reader = new JsonTextReader(streamReader); JsonSerializer serializer = new JsonSerializer(); JObject data = serializer.Deserialize<JObject>(reader); //... } ``` Then access the time: ``` DateTime theTime = (DateTime)data["theTime"]; ``` However, this gives me this DateTime object: ``` {20/11/2014 12:15:11} Date: {20/11/2014 00:00:00} Day: 20 DayOfWeek: Thursday DayOfYear: 324 Hour: 12 Kind: Local Millisecond: 0 Minute: 15 Month: 11 Second: 11 Ticks: 635520825110000000 TimeOfDay: {12:15:11} Year: 2014 ``` I need to know the original local time and tz offset, but I seem to have lost that information in the deserialization process, and it is…

Accepted Answer

I would use `DateTimeOffset` for this instead. `DateTime` doesn't have any useful time zone information associated with it.

You can deserialize to `DateTimeOffset` instead by changing `serializer.DateParseHandling`:

```
JsonSerializer serializer = new JsonSerializer();
serializer.DateParseHandling = DateParseHandling.DateTimeOffset;

JObject data = serializer.Deserialize<JObject>(reader);

var offset = (DateTimeOffset)data["theTime"];

Console.WriteLine(offset.Offset);    // -5:00:00
Console.WriteLine(offset.DateTime);  // 11/20/2014 7:15:11 AM
```

Example: https://dotnetfiddle.net/I9UAuC

How to preserve timezone when deserializing DateTime using JSON.NET?

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