How do I expose a TimeSpan through a WCF Data Service?

I am creating a WCF Data Service for my database of appointments.

I'm storing the appointment as a DateTime with a duration of type TimeSpan. When I attempt to access my data service, I get the following error:

"The server encountered an error processing the request. The exception message is 'The property 'Duration' on type 'Appointment' is of type 'Time' which is not a supported primitive type.'. See server logs for more details."

Any idea how I can represent a time duration and ha开发者_开发技巧ve it accessible through my WCF Data Service?

I would suggest exposing a new property for serialization (marked with the DataMemberAttribute) that use the Ticks property of your original timespan.

For example:

[DataMember("TheTimeSpanTicks")]
public long TheTimeSpanTicks
{
    get { return TheTimeSpan.Ticks; }
    set { TheTimeSpan = new TimeSpan(value); }
} 

I'm not sure what the accessor requirements for serialization will be. Maybe you could use protected instead of public.

You could expose the duration as Ticks, TotalSeconds, or some other primitive that can be calc'ed to hours, minutes, etc?