Native Neo4j DateTime support

[Kaston]

There is a new DateTime type in neo4j: https://neo4j.com/docs/developer-manual/current/cypher/syntax/temporal/. It would be really great for Neo4jClient to support it.

[cskardon]

Agreed - I don't have a timeframe on this - given workloads etc, I'm not even sure I want to hazard a guess. There are some issues around the GraphClient vs BoltGraphClient for this - as I'm aware of some changes which will necessitate some big changes - I will look into this when I can though

[richardu]

Is this issue really still open, or does Neo4jClient support the Neo4j native DATE_TIME now? (aside from the use of the Neo4jDateTime attribute.)

I described the problem I'm having here here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66872103/how-to-store-c-sharp-datetime-as-neo4j-date-time-instead-of-string-using-neo4jcl
but perhaps I'm doing something wrong...

[cskardon]

Yup, it's still open.
But thank you for reminding me, I'll try to get around to it, but - well, work and time are the big blockers here.

[richardu]

Hi @cskardon I had a quick look - seems to work if you just do this in Neo4jDriverExtensions.cs:

private static object SerializePrimitive(Type type, TypeInfo typeInfo, object instance)
{
    if (type == typeof(DateTime))
    {
        // return SerializeDateTime((DateTime) instance);
        return instance;
    }

    if (type == typeof(DateTimeOffset))
    {
        //return SerializeDateTimeOffset((DateTimeOffset) instance);
        return instance;
    }
...

Needs a bunch of tests to be sure it works 100% of the time though.

Took me a while to figure out this only works with the Bolt client and not the HTTP client!

[cskardon]

Well, yes, but that would break everyone else's code.
So we'd need probably to have it as a config option as part of the Client itself, and also make it work for REST and Bolt, plus the tests.

What it can't do is change how datetimes are handled by default, as that's a very large change that would break a lot of things.

By all means, PR just the bolt one and I'll look at retrofitting it into the REST version!

[richardu]

Hehehe, it would indeed! I didn't just submit a PR a) because of this and b) as you say, it needs to be properly configurable. TBH I thought you'd be best at deciding how you wanted it done, given there are probably several options...