how to filter out DateTime type of values from all hashtable value?

Question

I need to convert all DateTime values to String, though out my project, all of my code at the end follows 1 function, where I have 4 different Hashtables (actually XmlRpcStruct Object of CookComputing xmlrpc library).

is there any way that without iterating on each hash table - I can convert the values of hashtable having datetime -> string.

without iterating - I mean just to make the processing faster, but I need to solve it for nested hashtables where key contains another hashtable too.

Answer 1

Why can't you just convert the date to a time when you are adding it into the hashtable?

myHashTable.Add("ADate", DateTime.Now.ToString());

Answer 2

You could process your hashtable, just before sending to that server. Inspect each object. Is it really a DateTime, then replace it with a .ToString with the appropriate format.

public static void ProcessHT(Hashtable ht)
{
 Hashtable dates = new Hashtable();

 foreach(DictionaryEntry de in ht)
 {
  if (de.Value is DateTime)
   dates.Add(de.Key, de.Value);
 }

 foreach(DictionaryEntry de in dates)
 {
  ht.Remove(de.Key);
  ht.Add(de.Key, ((DateTime)de.Value).ToString("s"));
 }
}

public static void RunSnippet()
{
 Hashtable ht = new Hashtable();

 ht.Add("1", "one");
 ht.Add("date", DateTime.Today);
 ht.Add("num", 1);
 Print(ht);
 WL("---");
 ProcessHT(ht);
 Print(ht);
}

private static void Print(Hashtable ht)
{
 foreach (DictionaryEntry de in ht)
 {
  WL("{0} = {1}", de.Key, de.Value);
 }
}