title: Parse Java Date over Jackson JSON to C#
body: <p>I need to parse a java date from a backend to a c# frontend (Unity) via json using the jackson mapper on the backend side and the unity mapper(JsonUtility) on the frontend.</p>
  
  <p>Now these two mappers don't seem to work together, since the unity mapper always fails to receive the correct date and defaults to the "null date".
  My question is, do I need to send the date as long (milliseconds) over the wire?
  If so, my jackson mapper would need a custom (de)serializer - is there any performance tradeoff with that?</p>
  
  <p>Edit: </p>
  
  <p>There is not much of code to explain:</p>
  
  <p>Maven dependency backend</p>
  
  <pre><code> &lt;dependency&gt;
        &lt;groupId&gt;com.fasterxml.jackson.core&lt;/groupId&gt;
        &lt;artifactId&gt;jackson-annotations&lt;/artifactId&gt;
        &lt;version&gt;2.9.2&lt;/version&gt;
   &lt;/dependency&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Backend (in my case this is spring boot)</p>
  
  <pre><code>import lombok.Data;
  import java.util.Date;
  @Data
  public class Backend{
     private Date aDate;
  
    public Backend() {
    this.aDate = new Date();
    }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>JSON when calling the REST API</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
   "aDate": "2018-05-18T22:35:47.760+0000"       
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Frontend (C# / Unity)</p>
  
  <pre><code>    using System;
      [Serializable]
      public class FrontEnd
      {
        public DateTime aDate;
      }
  
    private IEnumerator AcceptWww(WWW www)
          {
           // call made to Backend REST receiving an Backend object here
           yield return www;
          // trying to parse this to a FrontEnd object
          var dateObject = JsonUtility.FromJson&lt;FrontEnd&gt;(www.text);
         // date will always default to 1970
        dateObject.aDate;
          }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance,</p>
  
  <p>Codehai</p>