Force XmlSerializer to serialize DateTime as 'YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss'

.net, c#, xml-serialization

Solution

In the past, I've done the following to control datetime serialization:

- Ignore the DateTime property.

- Create a dummy string property that serializes/deserializes the way I want

Here is an example:

public class SomeClass
{
    [XmlIgnore]
    public DateTime SomeDate { get; set; }

    [XmlElement("SomeDate")]
    public string SomeDateString
    {
        get { return this.SomeDate.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"); }
        set { this.SomeDate = DateTime.Parse(value); }
    }
}

Problem

I have a XSD schema for some RESTful service. When used in conjunction with `xsd.exe` tool to generate C# code, XSD's `xs:date` generates the following code: ``` [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute(Form=System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Unqualified, DataType="date")] public System.DateTime time { get { return this.timeField; } set { this.timeField = value; } } ``` When deserializing XML to objects using `XmlSerializer` all seems to be well. The problem I am facing is that the service expects dates to be formatted as `YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss` and the XSD generated code seems to produce only `YYYY-MM-DD`. If I modify XSD manually to `xs:dateTime` type, the generated C# code produces: `2010-08-20T20:07:03.915039Z`. Basically, how do I force serialization to produce `YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss`? Is there something to do to XSD or is there something I can do to alter generated C# code?

Original source

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