.NET SDK error deserializing Firestore Timestamp

[wkesuma]

We have data saved to Algolia from Firestore using Cloud Functions, we’re using Firestore’s Timestamp to store DateTime. And it is currently translated to something like this on Algolia:
“testDate”: {
"_seconds": 1549545176,
"_nanoseconds": 159647000
}

The issue is whenever we tried to deserialized from .NET Client SDK, it failed on deserializing every DateTime object, with json error like this : Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReaderException: ‘Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: {. Path ‘hits[0].testDate’, line 1, position 158.’

Any idea how to solve this issue?

[sylvain.bellone]

Hi!
Could you show the complete record and how you are trying to deserialize it?

Otherwise Algolia indices are expecting dates to be formatted as Unix timestamps, so the issue is may coming from the fact that your field is an object. If you can, I would suggest to send dates in this format, it permits to filter and sort by date.

Record Specifications

[wijayakesuma]

I ended up creating custom json converter for it.
Basically the problem was Google Firestore has TimeStamp data type. It’s an object contains epoch seconds and nanoseconds. This is the data representation object in C# .NET Client SDK -> https://github.com/googleapis/google-cloud-dotnet/blob/master/apis/Google.Cloud.Firestore/Google.Cloud.Firestore/Timestamp.cs

Currently Algolia unable to deserialize this object properly either into C# DateTime or Firestore Timestamp
https://googleapis.github.io/google-cloud-dotnet/docs/Google.Cloud.Firestore/datamodel.html

It would be great if Algolia start implementing serializer for Firestore’s Timestamp, since Google recommend to use Algolia for their products.

[antoine.hemery]

Hello!

I am one of the maintainer of the .NET client! Thank you for your message.

Indeed, it could be a nice improvement for the .NET library to have this default serializer. However, it’s not a priority in our roadmap at the moment. I have opened an issue in our repo to no forget this feature. If you want to add your contribution to this issue you’re very welcome!

Thanks again and happy coding with Algolia