How to serialize to dateTime

Question

Working to get DateTimes for any time zone. I'm using DateTimeOffset, and a string, and an XmlElement attribute. When I do, I get the following error:

[InvalidOperationException: 'dateTime' is an invalid value for the XmlElementAttribute.DataType property. dateTime cannot be converted to System.String.]
System.Xml.Serialization.XmlReflectionImporter.ImportTypeMapping(TypeModel model, String ns, ImportContext context, String dataType, XmlAttributes a, Boolean repeats, Boolean openModel, RecursionLimiter limiter) +450

[InvalidOperationException: There was an error reflecting type 'System.String'.]
System.Xml.Serialization.XmlReflectionImporter.ImportTypeMapping(TypeModel model, String ns, ImportContext context, String dataType, XmlAttributes a, Boolean repeats, Boolean openModel, RecursionLimiter limiter) +1621
System.Xml.Serialization.XmlReflectionImporter.ImportAccessorMapping(MemberMapping accessor, FieldModel model, XmlAttributes a, String ns, Type choiceIdentifierType, Boolean rpc, Boolean openModel, RecursionLimiter limiter) +8750
System.Xml.Serialization.XmlReflectionImporter.ImportFieldMapping(StructModel parent, FieldModel model, XmlAttributes a, String ns, RecursionLimiter limiter) +139
System.Xml.Serialization.XmlReflectionImporter.InitializeStructMembers(StructMapping mapping, StructModel model, Boolean openModel, String typeName, RecursionLimiter limiter) +1273

[InvalidOperationException: There was an error reflecting property 'creationTimeX'.] ...

Code:

 [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElement(ElementName = "creationTime",
      DataType="dateTime")]
 public string creationTimeX
    {
        get
        {
            return this.creationTimeField.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:sszzz");
        }
        set
        {
            DateTimeOffset.TryParse(value, out this.creationTimeField);
        }
    }

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIgnoreAttribute()]
public System.DateTimeOffset creationTime
{
    get {
        return this.creationTimeField;
    }
    set {
        this.creationTimeField = value;
    }
}

Answer 1

Take a look at this StackOverflow question about serializing dates and UTC:

Best practices for DateTime serialization in .Net framework 3.5/SQL Server 2008

No need to create a special property just to accomplish the serialization.