Implicit Dynamics CRM data-type conversion

When working with Microsoft CRM data-types using web services there is no constructor parameters due to limitations of the WSDL code generation. This leads to few lines of code each time one want to create a variable of any CRM type.

This can be optimized using a Factory class where you encapsle the creation of the desired class. But one even cleaner way is to create a partial class and define "implicit" operators between CRM data-type and .NET data-type.

Here is an example on how it works.

Standard way of assigning a .NET DateTime to CRM DateTime,

CrmDateTime cdt = new CrmDateTime();
cdt.Value = DateTime.Today.ToString("s");

Using implicit declaration,

CrmDateTime cdt = DateTime.Now;

and back,

DateTime dt = cdt;

public partial class CrmDateTime {

  public CrmDateTime(DateTime dt) {
    this.Value = dt.ToString("s");
  }
  public static implicit operator CrmDateTime(DateTime dt) {
     return new CrmDateTime (dt);
  }
  public static implicit operator DateTime(CrmDateTime dt) {
     return DateTime.Parse(dt.Value);
  }
}