MongoDB Getting UTC Date Instead Of Local Date In ASP.NET MVC

Hello all!

When inserting local dates in MongoDB and retrieving them using C#, you might wonder why the date returned is inconsistent with the values stored in the database. Well, MongoDB treats those dates as UTC. So to display those dates as local, there are several solutions. Option one is to change the BsonElement attribute of a date property

[BsonElement]
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Activity Date required")]
[DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:yyyy-MM-dd}", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)]
public DateTime ActivityDate { get; set; }

to BsonDateTimeOptions and set it's kind to local.

[BsonDateTimeOptions(Kind = DateTimeKind.Local)]
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Activity Date required")]
[DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:yyyy-MM-dd}", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)]
public DateTime ActivityDate { get; set; }

Option two is to retain the BsonElement attribute of the date property.

[BsonElement]
[Required(ErrorMessage = "Activity Date required")]
[DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = "{0:yyyy-MM-dd}", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)]
public DateTime ActivityDate { get; set; }

and in your method to retrieve the collection, specify the date returned as UTC and then cast the UTC date as LocalTime.

public List<UserActivity> GetActivities()
{
 mongoCollection = mongoDB.GetCollection<UserActivity>("UserActivity");

 var list = mongoCollection.Find(f => true).ToList();
 foreach (var item in list)
 {
  var utcDate = DateTime.SpecifyKind(item.ActivityDate, DateTimeKind.Utc);
  item.ActivityDate = utcDate.ToLocalTime();
 }

 return list;
}  

Dates stored in MongoDB as local.

Dates retrieved are UTC and not local.

After applying solutions one or two.