JSON Flex Dates

If your Flex datagrid dates look like this:



And you want them to look like this:




You will want to call the fixDates function before passing your data string to the JSON.decode function.

//get the raw JSON data and cast to String
var rawData:String = String(event.result);

//fix the dates
rawData = fixDates(rawData);
     
//decode the data to ActionScript using the JSON API
var arr:Array = (JSON.decode(rawData) as Array);

// fix any dates of the format "\/Date(1280718000000-0300)\/"
// to a format like this  Mon Aug 2 2010 12:00:00 AM
private function fixDates(data:String):String
{
 var temp:String = data;      //copy incoming data to temporary string
 var pattern:RegExp = /\\\/Date\(\d*\-\d*\)\\\//gi;  //create regular expression to search for dates 
 var dates:Array = temp.match(pattern);    //array of all dates found
 
 for (var i:int=0; i< dates.length; i++){   //iterate through array of dates
  var milliseconds_and_offset:RegExp=/\d*\-\d*/gi; //create regular expresion to search for millisecond
           //and offset values Ex. 1246624494320-0300
  var values:Array = dates[i].toString().match(milliseconds_and_offset);
    
  var time:Array = values[0].toString().split("-"); //separate the millisecond and offset values  
  var milli:Number = new Number(time[0].toString()); //store milliseconds
  var offset:Number = new Number (time[1].toString());//store offset
    
  var replacementDate:Date = new Date();   //create a new replacement date
  replacementDate.setTime(milli);    //set new date with the correct time
    
  //search and replace 
  data =this.searchAndReplace(data,dates[i].toString(),replacementDate.toLocaleString());
 }  
  return data;
}



private function searchAndReplace(holder:String, searchfor:String, replacement:String):String
{
 var temparray:Array = holder.split(searchfor);
 holder = temparray.join(replacement);
 return holder;
}