The "date" property on returned invoices has a TypeScript type of "string" but is in fact a "Date"

[andrew-rheingans]

SDK you're using (please complete the following information):

• Version 10.0.0

Describe the bug
When making a paged request for Invoices, the "date" property on returned invoices has a TypeScript type of "string" but is in fact a "Date". I think string is preferable since there can be timezone ambiguity with Date - for example, was the date string parsed in the context of the server timezone (using standard Date() constructor) or was it parsed using Date.UTC(). Also, thee same thing seems to be happening with the "dueDate" as well as the date on payments.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Fetch a paged list of invoices
2. See that Invoice.date is actually a date - but it should be a string

Expected behavior
The date property should be a string

[github-actions]

PETOSS-715

[github-actions]

Thanks for raising an issue, a ticket has been created to track your request

[rowandh]

+1 for this. A string would be preferable because the time is in local time, but will be interpreted as a Date with a timezone. Unless Xero wants to start returning times with the correct timezone offset for the organization?

Looks like the problem happens when deserializing the response:

xero-node/src/gen/model/accounting/models.ts

Line 581 in 3d66920

if (type === "string" && data.toString().substring(0, 6) === "/Date(") {

In the meantime, you can access the raw response from axios and pull the strings off it:

const invoicesResponse = await xero.accountingApi.getInvoices(...);
const rawInvoices = invoicesResponse.response.data.Invoices;
const date = rawInvoices[0].DateString;
const dueDate = rawInvoices[0].DueDateString;
...

[twrayden]

For anyone else who encounters this. Below is the function I'm now using to get around this issue with luxon

const XeroDateFormat = "yyyy-LL-dd";

function parseUnsafeXeroDate(value: Date | string): DateTime {
  if (typeof value === "string") {
    try {
      return DateTime.fromFormat(value, XeroDateFormat, { zone: "utc" });
    } catch (err) {
      const fromISO = DateTime.fromISO(value, { zone: "utc" });
      if (fromISO.isValid) {
        return fromISO;
      }
      throw err;
    }
  } else {
    return DateTime.fromJSDate(value, { zone: "utc" });
  }
}