CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.net-mvcjson
Endy Tjahjono
Endy Tjahjono

Reputation: 24500

Serializing an object's reference to JSON

I am using ASP.NET MVC 2 with Visual Studio 2010. A lot of my controller actions need to serialize my POCO domain objects into JSON. BTW I use nhibernate as my ORM.

I am using System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer. It handles simple properties well (int, string, date, etc.), but it skips reference properties, so I have to map my object to anonymous type, and then feed this anonymous type to the JavaScriptSerializer like this:

Public Class Order
    Public Property ID As Integer
    Public Property Customer As User
End Class

Function Details() As ActionResult
    Dim realorder As Order = DB.Get(Of Order)(id)
    Dim flattenedorder As New With {
        .id = realorder.ID, .customerid = realorder.Customer.ID}
    Dim encoder = New System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer()
    ViewData("order") = encoder.Serialize(flattenedorder)
    Return View()
End Function

In the above example, Order.ID is an int, but Order.Customer is a reference to another object. I have to create anonymous type where I specify .customerid = realorder.Customer.ID, so it is serialized correctly.

What I want to know is, is there an easier way? My domain objects have lots of references and I want to avoid creating anonymous type everytime I want to serialize them to JSON.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 836

Answers (2)

thangchung
thangchung

Reputation: 2030

@Endy: You can use the Json.NET for serialize you model to Json. I usually do it like that:

  • Build the DTO objects
  • Use AutoMapper for mapping between my entities and DTO objects
  • Decorating some Json.NET attributes on DTOs objects
  • Coding 2 helper methods for convert DTOs to Json format

You can get some stuffs in my post at here. Hope I can help you!

Upvotes: 1

Darin Dimitrov
Darin Dimitrov

Reputation: 1039368

Simply return the appropriate action result and don't bother manually serializing:

Function Details() As ActionResult
    Dim realorder As Order = DB.Get(Of Order)(id)
    Dim flattenedorder As New With {
        .id = realorder.ID, .customerid = realorder.Customer.ID}
    Return Json(flattenedorder, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet)
End Function

As far as the references are concerned the problem stems from the fact that you are returning domain objects to the view instead of using view models. Not using view models specifically tailored to a given view is one of the most fundamental mistakes I see when people use ASP.NET MVC. So start by defining POCO objects that will represent only the portion of your domain models that is needed by the given view and then you could use AutoMapper to convert between your models and view models.

Upvotes: 2

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