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c#jsonserializationdotnet-httpclientdatacontractjsonserializer
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Reputation: 5255

How can I implicitly serialize via DataContractJsonSerializer when creating StringContent for HTTPClient?

I have an object that I convert to json in order to send it to a web service. I added a method to the class that returns a json string

public string ToJson()
{
    return new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize(this).ToLower();
}

The HTTPClient.PutAsync() method takes a StringContent object, which I create like so:

var content = new StringContent(object.ToJson(), Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");

I can call PutAsync() and everything works fine.

I recently found a different serialisation method that uses [DataContract], [DataMember] , DataContractJsonSerializer and a Stream to serialize an object. I would like to use this method instead, because it gives more control of the result with the attributes, but requires a lot more boilerplate code (writing to stream, repositioning, reading, etc.).

Given that I used the Data attributes to specify how my object should be serialized, how can I specify that the DataContractJsonSerializer should be used to serialize it? Preferably, I can simply pass the object to StringContent without an explicit method call, like so:

var content = new StringContent(object, Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");

Similar to how ToString() is implicitly called in certain situations, I'd like to know if there's anything that understands that if I specify the content type to be "application/json", that the passed object should be serialized into json.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1198

Answers (1)

Darin Dimitrov
Darin Dimitrov

Reputation: 1039438

You could try to adapt the ToJson method so that it uses the DataContractJsonSerializer instead:

public string ToJson()
{
    var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(this.GetType());
    using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
    {
        serializer.WriteObject(stream, this);
        return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(stream.ToArray());
    }
}

By the way, have you considered using the Newtonsoft.Json library? It also provides you with lots of control over the serialization process with the [JsonProperty] attributes and custom converters:

public string ToJson()
{
    return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(this);
}

Upvotes: 1

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