Temporal Types

Working with date and time types in Restier

Temporal Types

When using the Microsoft.Restier.Providers.EntityFramework provider, temporal types are now supported. The table below shows how Temporal Types map to SQL Types:

EF Type	SQL Type	Edm Type	Need ColumnAttribute?
System.DateTime	DateTime/DateTime2	Edm.DateTimeOffset	Y
System.DateTimeOffset	DateTimeOffset	Edm.DateTimeOffset	N
System.DateTime	Date	Edm.Date	Y
System.TimeSpan	Time	Edm.TimeOfDay	Y
System.TimeSpan	Time	Edm.Duration	N

The next sections illustrate how to use use temporal types in various scenarios.

Edm.DateTimeOffset

Suppose you have an entity class Person, all the following code define Edm.DateTimeOffset properties in the EDM model though the underlying SQL types are different (see the value of the TypeName property). You can see Column attribute is optional here.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema;

public class Person
{
    public DateTime BirthDateTime1 { get; set; }

    [Column(TypeName = "DateTime")]
    public DateTime BirthDateTime2 { get; set; }

    [Column(TypeName = "DateTime2")]
    public DateTime BirthDateTime3 { get; set; }

    public DateTimeOffset BirthDateTime4 { get; set; }
}

Edm.Date

The following code define an Edm.Date property in the EDM model.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema;

public class Person
{
    [Column(TypeName = "Date")]
    public DateTime BirthDate { get; set; }
}

Edm.Duration

The following code define an Edm.Duration property in the EDM model.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema;

public class Person
{
    public TimeSpan WorkingHours { get; set; }
}

Edm.TimeOfDay

The following code define an Edm.TimeOfDay property in the EDM model. Please note that you MUST NOT omit the ColumnTypeAttribute on a TimeSpan property otherwise it will be recognized as an Edm.Duration as described above.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.Schema;

public class Person
{
    [Column(TypeName = "Time")]
    public TimeSpan BirthTime { get; set; }
}

As before, if you have the need to override ODataPayloadValueConverter, please now change to override RestierPayloadValueConverter instead in order not to break the payload value conversion specialized for these temporal types.