CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jsonrestxml-serializationasp.net-mvc-4asp.net-web-api
frapontillo
frapontillo

Reputation: 10679

Change name of inner objects for ASP .NET MVC 4 WebAPI serialization (XML/JSON)

I am building a RESTful Web Service with the new Microsoft MVC 4 ApiController class and WebAPI. I have a Person class:

public class Person
{
    public string surname { get; set; }
    public string name{ get; set; }
}

and the default HTTP GET method works, returning the following:

<Person xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <surname>John</surname>
    <name>Titor</name>
</Person>

I now need an annotation set which lets me change the default inner objects' names, for example I'd like to change surname into msurname. I have tried adding the following:

[XmlElement("msurname")]

annotation, but that only works if the Accept header of my request contains application/xml (of course). I have tried and used the [DataMember] annotation, which is completely ignored.

Is there an annotation set I can use with this ApiController in WebAPI for serialization into both XML and JSON formats? Thank you.

EDIT: correction, if I use the [DataMember] and [DataContract] annotation, I get the desired behaviour with JSON serialization, but not with the XML. The opposite thing happens if I use [XmlElement].

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4842

Answers (3)

Darrel Miller
Darrel Miller

Reputation: 142014

The behaviour you are seeing with DataMember is because by default WebAPI uses XmlSerializer, not DataContractSerializer. However JSON uses the JSONDataContractSerializer by default at the moment. However in the future it will not. You can change the XML to the XmlDataContractSerializer by setting 

GlobalConfiguration.Config.Formatters.XmlDataContractSerializer = true;

That way, both the JSON and XML formats will use the DataContractSerializer.

Upvotes: 5

tugberk
tugberk

Reputation: 58444

The way it works is that you will be dealing with Formatters. The XML data you are getting is produced by XmlMediaTypeFormatter (XmlMediaTypeFomatter Class).

I am not aware of any built-in feature as you describe but it is fairly easy to write your own formatter.

Here is an example of a custom formatter implementation, you will get the idea:

Using JSON.NET with ASP.NET Web API

Upvotes: 0

ntziolis
ntziolis

Reputation: 10221

The two serializers do use different Attributes to handle renaming of columns etc.

There is no way to unify that you will need to have both Attributes present.

You could however use a different XML/JSON serializer that recognizes the other ones attributes.

UPDATE
You might also try the DataAnnotations and see if the serializers recognize them

Upvotes: 0

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