CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.net-web-apijson.netmodel-binding
Ivan Milutinović
Ivan Milutinović

Reputation: 319

Model Binder of Json.Net not being used when i post an object

To clarify... I configure my WebApiConfig like so:

config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SerializerSettings.Binder = new TypeNameSerializationBinder("namespace.{0}, assembly");
config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SerializerSettings.TypeNameHandling = TypeNameHandling.Auto;

This should allow me to bind derived classes to base class. And binder does work when WebApi serializes objects to JSON, and sends them to client, but when I post them back to server, the binder isn't used (BindToType method never gets called), and my objects get bound to base class.

When i serialize/deserialize objects manually with this settings it all works fine.

Any ideas?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1213

Answers (2)

s.meijer
s.meijer

Reputation: 3909

I had the same problem when trying to deserialize complex objects with a custom JsonConverters. I needed this because I'm using DbGeometry for storing users locations.

I broke my head on this a couple of days, I really thought I was doing something wrong, because every time I posted an geometry to the Web API, the complex type parameter was set to null. This while JsonConverter was perfectly able to convert the json to an filled object.

My workaround for this is written below. I don't like that I can't just use the parameter as I'm supposed to do. But it works, at last.

[HttpPost]
public MyComplexType SaveMyComplexType()
{
    var json = Request.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
    var myComplexType = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MyComplexType>(json);

    //todo: validation and save to db

    return myComplexType;
}

Upvotes: 1

Ivan Milutinović
Ivan Milutinović

Reputation: 319

After some research, I found that this is a bug in ASP.NET Web Api. When the url encoded parameters are parsed, it just creates a new JsonSerializer (without passing global settings).

I filed it here

http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/workitem/609

Upvotes: 0

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