DateTime optionally containing microseconds

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi all,

I'm sending DateTimes over soap to JADE agent system.

If I send DateTime.now over it is accepted fine.. and ends up as:

2009-09-30T09:20:52.959452-03:00

However, if I convert a Rails model field to datetime and send it over its of class DateTime but loses the microseconds. Which my SOAP server inconveniently requires to be present.

@seller.deadline.to_datetime

ends up as:

2009-09-29T23:20:00-03:00

And is rejected.

I was able to get @seller.deadline.to_datetime to be accepted by adding the microsecond portion of DateTime.now to it. But that seems like an awful hack.

How do I ensure a given DateTime such as the one extracted from a rails model is alays sent with the microsecond portion present over SOAP?

thanks, Aaron

        obj = EcommercePort.new         obj.wiredump_dev = STDERR if $DEBUG

        time_periods = ArrayOfSellerTimePeriod.new         #time_periods[0] = SellerTimePeriod.new (@seller.deadline.to_datetime, @seller.openingOffer, @seller.alpha, @seller.umin, @seller.deadline.to_datetime)         time_periods[0] = SellerTimePeriod.new (@seller.deadline.to_datetime + DateTime.now.sec_fraction, @seller.openingOffer.to_f, @seller.alpha, @seller.umin, DateTime.now)

        p time_periods[0]

        parameters = {           :sellerID => @seller.sellerID,           :maxPossPrice => @seller.openingOffer.to_f,           :itemID => @seller.itemID,           :deadline => DateTime.now,           :timePeriods => time_periods         }

        puts obj.clientGatewayCreateNewSeller(parameters)

2

If you can use a Time instance rather than a Date, you can get the format you want with something like this:

now = Time.now.utc now.strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%%sZ")%[('.%03d'%[now.usec/1000]).sub(/\.?0+\z/,'')]

Note that the .sub() takes off trailing 0's from the fractional time which may not be something that you want. Basically, you need to roll your own method (as you seem to have sensed). Seems like you can create a similar method for your DateTime instance using DateTime#sec_fraction like I've used Time#usec (microseconds; µs) along with DateTime#strftime.

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn http://agileconsultingllc.com Rob@AgileConsultingLLC.com