Event timestamp serialization from JSON

[arend-melissant-tnt]

Package

Sentry

.NET Flavor

.NET

.NET Version

8.0

OS

Any (not platform specific)

SDK Version

4.0.0

Self-Hosted Sentry Version

No response

Steps to Reproduce

read envelope from incoming message (using sentry-cli send-event)
deserialize envelope using var envelope = await Envelope.DeserializeAsync(stream);

this will throw an exception: The requested operation requires an element of type 'String', but the target element has type 'Number'.

this is an the "timestamp" element of the event payload

Expected Result

timestamp should deserialize with either a string or number (per SDK)

Actual Result

Exception thrown

[bruno-garcia]

read envelope from incoming message (using sentry-cli send-event)
deserialize envelope using var envelope = await Envelope.DeserializeAsync(stream);

There might be something to fix here but to to clarify: An envelope and an event are different things. Envelopes contain items, and one of those could be an event.

What are you trying to accomplish? we might be able to help you differently

[arend-melissant-tnt]

Hi,

I'm just trying to deserialize an complete received envelope, which fails if it contains an event with a timestamp formatted as a number. When te timestamp is formatted as a string everything works as expected. I do see in the code (or so it seems) that timestamps as numbers are not supported, but that should be supported as even the sentry-cli sends such events.

[bitsandfoxes]

Happy to help but I'm not quite following how to reproduce the issue you're running into:
You're sending an event via sentry-cli but how and why does that generated envelope end up in the .NET SDK? The stream is just the deserialized envelope you're picking up from somewhere?

[arend-melissant-tnt]

I'm forwarding messages to Sentry, that's how I get the messages. I'll create a small test for you to see what's happening

[arend-melissant-tnt]

DeserialisationTests.txt

this is a simple unit test to recreate the issue

see https://develop.sentry.dev/sdk/event-payloads/ where it is explained that the timestamp can be either a string or a number

[bitsandfoxes]

I see. Yeah, we rely on GetDateTimeOffset() in System.Text.Json.JsonElement and that strictly expects a string to parse.
I guess we could check the valuetype when parsing from json to event?

[bitsandfoxes]

I think we're looking for something like

json.TryGetProperty("timestamp", out var timestampElement);
DateTimeOffset? timestamp = null;
if (timestampElement.ValueKind == JsonValueKind.String)
{
    timestamp = timestampElement.GetDateTimeOffset();
}
else if (timestampElement.ValueKind == JsonValueKind.Number)
{
    timestamp = DateTimeOffset.FromUnixTimeSeconds((long)timestampElement.GetDouble());
}

instead of

sentry-dotnet/src/Sentry/SentryEvent.cs

Line 293 in ee3ea36

var timestamp = json.GetPropertyOrNull("timestamp")?.GetDateTimeOffset();

@arend-melissant-tnt, would you be willing to open a PR for this?

[Tuytje]

I'm having this issue in the latest version, any idea when this will be fixed?

[aritchie]

@Tuytje #3958 <= this PR contains other features, but also a fix for this particular issue

[aritchie]

Referencing #2102 - close this issue with that issue

[albyrock87]

@aritchie if it helps this is the involved JSON

{
  "timestamp": "2025-03-01T11:01:48.534Z",
  "type": "system",
  "data": {
    "upload_bandwidth": 150560,
    "action": "NETWORK_CAPABILITIES_CHANGED",
    "vpn_active": false,
    "signal_strength": -60,
    "network_type": "wifi",
    "download_bandwidth": 25236
  },
  "category": "network.event",
  "level": "info"
}