I have a class that looks like this:
[DataContract(Name = "Item", Namespace = "")]
public class Item : Dictionary<string, string>
{
}
I have a controller which returns a bunch of items.
public async IAsyncEnumerable<Item> Query()
{
...
}
When I call the api an accept json, the response is exactly what I want:
[
{
"Id": "270",
"PropertyX": "z1",
"AnotherProperty": "270"
},
...
]
When I call the api an accept xml, I have an exception:
An error occurred while trying to create a DataContractSerializer for the type 'Item'.
System.Runtime.Serialization.InvalidDataContractException: Type 'Item' cannot be ISerializable and have DataContractAttribute attribute.
What I'm really trying to do is serialize an object that can have any set of properties (hence inheriting from Dictionary) and have those properties serialize nicely in the object. If I don't injerit from Dictionary, and make a property of type dictionary instead, the dictionary serializes as a child of my Items object which I don't want.
Related
In DDD, Value Object and Enumeration are quite beautiful so that I want use both two in the daily program logic, not only domain logic. When use customized value objects and enumerations, serialization problem is coming : should I implemented all the value objects and enumeration with System.Text.Json.JsonConverter<T> , or is there any good way to handle serialization and deserialization ?
Update:
to make it clear, Eumeration demo as below(ValueObject derived classes are same.):
[JsonConverter(typeof(CustomizedConverter))]
public class CustomizedEnumeration1 : Enumeration
{
public string Customized { get; protected set; }
public ... // some other customized property or class
public CustomizedEnumeration(int id, string name, string customized) : base(id, string) {
Customized = customized;
}
}
public class Customized2 : Enumeration
{ ... }
public class OtherCustomized: Enumeration
{ ... }
In DDD, properties sometimes are sealed by protected/private setter, deserialization has no right to set the value. Many derived classes can't deserialize as expected, so we have to rewrite serialization with System.Text.Json.JsonConverter<T> one by one. rewrite every derived Enumeration / Valueobject converter is not good, can any one point out any easy abstraction for that ?
You can achieve your desired result. You need to switch to NewtonsoftJson serialization.
Call this in Startup.cs in the ConfigureServices method:
services.AddControllers().AddNewtonsoftJson();
After this, your constructor will be called by deserialization for classes with private setter.
There is no need for custom converters.
For reference, I am using ASP Net Core 3.1
When I set Json.NET to serialize with TypeNameHandling set to TypeNameHandling.Auto, it correctly sets $type for child properties of an object but does not do so for the root object being serialized. Why?
Please consider the following repro:
public class Animal
{
public Animal[] Offspring { get; set; }
}
public class Dog : Animal {}
Animal fido = new Dog
{
Offspring = new Animal[] { new Dog() }
};
var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(fido,
new JsonSerializerSettings
{
TypeNameHandling = TypeNameHandling.Auto
});
The Json emitted into the json variable is:
{
"Offspring": [{
"$type": "MyApp.Dog, MyApp",
"Offspring": null
}]
}
The Json.NET Documentation says that for TypeNameHandling.Auto the behavior is:
Include the .NET type name when the type of the object being serialized is not the same as its declared type.
My question is - Why does fido not have
"$type": "MyApp.Dog, MyApp", like its puppy? :)
UPDATE: I've found out from the accepted answer to this question that I can force $type to be added by doing this:
var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(fido,
typeof(Animal),
new JsonSerializerSettings
{
TypeNameHandling = TypeNameHandling.Auto,
Formatting = Formatting.Indented
});
But my question still holds - Why does Json.NET not do this by itself as per the documentation?
Short answer: it doesn't because it can't.
As you stated in your question, setting TypeNameHandling to Auto directs Json.Net to include the .NET type name when the actual (run-time) type of the object being serialized is not the same as its declared (compile-time) type. In order to do that, Json.Net needs to know both types for every object.
For everything inside the root object, this is straightforward: just get the runtime type of the root object via GetType(), then use reflection to get all of its declared properties and their types, and for each one compare the declared type to the actual type to see if they differ. If they do, output the type name.
But for the root object itself, Json.Net doesn't have access to both types. All the information it has is the object referenced by fido, whose runtime type is Dog. There's no way for Json.Net to discover that the fido variable was declared as Animal, unless you provide that context somehow. And that is exactly why Json.Net provides overloads of SerializeObject which allow you to specify the compile-time type of the object being serialized. You must use one of these overloads if you want the TypeNameHandling.Auto setting to work for the root object.
Brian is absolutely correct, Json.NET has no way of knowing the compile-time declared type of the object it's being passed as the value parameter is declared as an object. The easy fix for this was if Json.NET added generic serialize methods so that the compile-time declared type would automatically flow over to Json.NET but the library's author has decided against my proposal for this here.
As an alternative, I've wrapped all my json (de)serialization needs in a JsonHelper class with generic serialize methods which use the typeof expression to automatically pass the compile-time declared type of the value to be serialized.
Newer versions of Json.Net allow you to pass the expected type to the serialize method
ser.Serialize(stream, rootObject, typeof(BaseClass));
You can pass the base class to the serialize method and TypeNameHandling.Auto will write the $type if the object and expected type do not match.
I need to wrap a List<Something> in a DTO (say, Wrapper) so that some custom annotations work as expected. I end up with this:
public class Wrapper {
private List<Something> list;
#CustomAnnotationsHere
public List<Something> getList() { ... }
public void setList(List<Something> list) { ... }
}
However, this makes Jackson serialize/deserialize the Wrapper object as
{
"list": [...]
}
which, IMHO, is too verbose and unnecessarily complex. Is there any way to have Jackson serialize/deserialize this Wrapper object as a list (the value of the list field)?
I would swear I once came across an annotation-based way of achieving this, but at the moment I can't recall where.
Add #JsonValue to the field for serialization, and a single-argument constructor for deserialization?
I am trying a host a service where there is a method that returns the following type:
[DataContract]
[Obfuscation(ApplyToMembers = true, Exclude = true)]
[Serializable]
public class Output
{
[DataMember]
public DataSet dsOutput{get;set;}
}
The method signature is as follows:
[OperationContract]
[WebGet]
function Output matchData(DataSet pDSSide1,DataSet pDSSide2)
{
return new Output();
}
On browsing the service I encounter the following exception:
System.InvalidOperationException: An exception was thrown in a call to a WSDL export extension:System.ServiceModel.Description.DataContractSerializerOperationBehavior
contract: http://tempuri.org/:TesterTool ---->
System.Runtime.Serialization.InvalidDataContractException: Type 'System.Data.DataRow' cannot be serialized. Consider marking it with the DataContractAttribute attribute, and marking all of its members you want serialized with the DataMemberAttribute attribute. If the type is a collection, consider marking it with the CollectionDataContractAttribute. See the Microsoft .NET Framework documentation for other supported types.
`
Any suggestions.
It's not a good practice to send a DataTable over a service.
As stated by govindaraj here:
The best way is to use custom collection of custom object.
If you're using 2.0, then you can use generic collection instead of
custom collection to reduce code.
How?
Create a custom data object (containing only private fields and public properties for each field) that is similar to each row in the
datatable.
Create a layer that will do all database (in this case, dataset) access and translation to the custom object.
All client code will access that layer.
I use ASP.NET WCF to return .NET objects in JSON format through jquery calls.
When I changed my .NET classes to serializable, which I expose through methods in my WCF class, the objects property names suddenly changed from:
Name to _Name.
So all code in my javascript classes where I access json objects is wrong.
Why do the properties have a underscore prefix now?
And how do I change it back without removing the serializable attribute on the classes?
Thanks.
Christian
When you say that you "changed the class to serializable", does it mean you added the [Serializable] attribute on them? If this is the case: classes marked with that attribute have all of their fields serialized (no properties). In the example below, this class doesn't have any attributes, and it does have a parameter-less constructor, so it's considered a "POCO" (plain-old CLR object) type. POCO types have their public members (fields or properties) serialized. If you decorate it with [Serializable], then it will fall into the serializable rule.
Why do you need to mark your type with [Serializable]? If you really need to do that (for some legacy serializer), you can also decorate your type with [DataContract] and [DataMember] attributes, which are honored by the WCF serializer. You'd add [DataContract] on the type, and [DataMember] on the properties which you want serialized.
public class Person
{
private string _Name;
private int _Age;
public string Name {
get { return this._Name; }
set { this._Name = value; }
}
public string Age {
get { return this._Age; }
set { this._Age = value; }
}
}