CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#jsonasp.net-web-apijson.netasp.net-web-api2
Matías Fidemraizer
Matías Fidemraizer

Reputation: 64933

Some property doesn't get serialized when returned in a Web API action

The issue is with the following class:

[DebuggerDisplay("{Kind}: {Identifier}")]
public class SocialConnection
{
    public virtual Guid UniqueId
    {
        get { return Id; }
        set { Id = value; }
    }

    // SocialConnectionKind is an enumeration
    public virtual SocialConnectionKind Kind { get; set; }

    public virtual string Identifier { get; set; }
}

Kind property never gets serialized: when I request an object which has an associated SocialConnection I never get the whole property.

BTW, if I manually call JsonConvert.SerializeObject it gets serialized. It should be something with the default media-type formatter but I can't figure out the solution so far.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 115

Answers (1)

Matías Fidemraizer
Matías Fidemraizer

Reputation: 64933

The issue which was causing this serialization problem was very simple. Check SocialConnectionKind enumeration:

public enum SocialConnectionKind
{
    Skype,
    Facebook,
    Twitter,
    LinkedIn,
    Hangouts
}

Did you already notice what could be the problem? The issue wouldn't be reproduced if the value would be any excepting Skype!

Why? Enumerations start with 0 and see how I've configured my WebAPI's HttpConfiguration:

config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SerializerSettings.DefaultValueHandling =
                                                           DefaultValueHandling.Ignore;

Which is the default value of the Enum default underlying type int? Yes, it's 0.

So, what solved the issue?

public enum SocialConnectionKind
{
    Skype = 1, // <--- The issue was solved starting the enumeration from 1!
    Facebook,
    Twitter,
    LinkedIn,
    Hangouts
}

Another approach

As @Avner Shahar-Kashtan have pointed out in some comment, I could also solve this issue using [JsonProperty(DefaultValueHandling = DefaultValueHandling.Include)] attribute:

[DebuggerDisplay("{Kind}: {Identifier}")]
public class SocialConnection
{
    public virtual Guid UniqueId
    {
        get { return Id; }
        set { Id = value; }
    }

    // SocialConnectionKind is an enumeration
    [JsonProperty(DefaultValueHandling = DefaultValueHandling.Include)]
    public virtual SocialConnectionKind Kind { get; set; }

    public virtual string Identifier { get; set; }
}

...and this way there's no need of starting an enumeration from 1.

Anyway, in my particular case, I prefer to stay with the start from 1 approach, because I find cleaner avoid polluting my POCOs with serialization-specific attributes because SocialConnection class lives in a shared library and this serialization issue is an implementation issue in a concrete project.

Upvotes: 4

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