How to handle dates with serde

Use the chrono crate with the serde feature to serialize and deserialize dates automatically. Add chrono = { version = "0.4", features = ["serde"] } to your Cargo.toml, then derive Serialize and Deserialize on your struct fields using chrono::DateTime<Utc>.

use chrono::{DateTime, Utc};
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize)]
struct Event {
    timestamp: DateTime<Utc>,
}

This handles ISO 8601 formatting by default when converting to or from JSON.

Serde cannot handle Rust's built-in date types directly because they are not standard. You must add an external library called chrono that knows how to turn dates into text and back. Think of it like hiring a translator who speaks both Rust and JSON so your dates don't get lost in translation.