I have a javascript function that calls an MVC controller with JSON data:

var specsAsJson = JSON.stringify(specs);

$.post('/Home/Save', { jsonData: specsAsJson });

On the server side, within the controller, I can't seem to get past this error:

/Date(1347992529530)/ is not a valid value for DateTime.

That exception happens when I call Deserialize() (third line in method below):

    public ActionResult Save(string jsonData)

    {

        var serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();

        serializer.RegisterConverters(new[] { new TimeSpanJsonConverter() });

        var specs = serializer.Deserialize<List<EquipmentSpecWithParameterlessConstructor>>(jsonData);



        return View(Index, _allTrackerJobs);

    }

I've been doing some googling, and the above code is my latest attempt to make this work (using the TimeSpanJsonConverter from here). Other approaches show sending only a date to the server, but I have a list of objects that have dates as some properties.

Is there an elegant, generally-accepted approach to solving this, or do we still need some kind of ugly work-around? What's the right way to resolve this?

=================== End of original question ===================

Edit - SOLVED by serializing using JsonConvert

See my answer below (not the crappy work-around in this question).

Edit - Crappy work-around

I created a DTO with the exact same fields as the domain object, except that I made the date fields strings so they would deserialize. Now that I can deserialize it, I'll work on getting the dates into a valid format so I can create domain objects from my DTOs.

public class EquipmentSpecDto

{

    public string StartTime { get; set; }

    public string EndTime { get; set; }

    // more properties here

}

And I simply just used the DTO for the deserialization:

var specs = serializer.Deserialize<List<EquipmentSpecDto>>(jsonData);

Edit 2 - Converting JavaScript Dates to .NET

For completeness, and in the hopes that I save someone else an hour, this is how I was able to convert the javascript dates:

    foreach (EquipmentSpecDto specDto in specDtos)

    {

        // JavaScript uses the unix epoch of 1/1/1970. Note, it's important to call ToLocalTime()

        // after doing the time conversion, otherwise we'd have to deal with daylight savings hooey.

        DateTime unixEpoch       = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Utc);

        Double startMilliseconds = Convert.ToDouble(specDto.StartTime.Substring(6, 13));

        Double endMilliseconds   = Convert.ToDouble(specDto.EndTime.Substring(6, 13));

        DateTime startTime       = unixEpoch.AddMilliseconds(startMilliseconds).ToLocalTime();

        DateTime endTime         = unixEpoch.AddMilliseconds(endMilliseconds).ToLocalTime();

        EquipmentSpec spec       = new EquipmentSpec(startTime, endTime, specDto.Equipment);



        specs.Add(spec);

    }