Enum returning string value in WebAPI

Question

I have come across a piece of code in my Web API project, which has a class of this structure:

public class QuestionDto
{
    public bool disabled {get;set;}
    public int id {get;set;}
    public int order {get;set;}
    public PositionDto pagePosition {get;set;}
    public string title {get;set;}
}

public enum PositionDto
{
    FullWidth = 0,
    Half = 1
}

There is an API call that returns QuestionDto, along the lines of:

[Route("")]
[HttpGet]
[ResponseType(typeof(QuestionDto))]
public async Task<IHttpActionResult> GetCategoryQuestions()
{
    return Ok(new QuestionDto { PagePosition = PagePositionDto.Half });
}

Here is a snip from the Chrome console network tab showing the repsonse for this API call:

How can the enum be returning its text value, rather than its int value?

To confuse this even further, if I then take this same class structure and copy and paste to a differrent project, the api call returning this object will return the int value - which is what I would expect.

So ho can the fist project be returning the string value?

Is there some setting somewhere which can make this enum return its string value?

Answer 1

There is a setting that can be added to a variable, that will return the string value in JSON.

It can either be set on the variable declaration like this:

[JsonConverter(typeof(StringEnumConverter))]
public PositionDto pagePosition { get; set; }

or it can be set globally, like this:

var json = config.Formatters.JsonFormatter;
json.SerializerSettings.Converters.Add(new StringEnumConverter());

Answer 2

if you are using asp.net core use JsonStringEnumConverter instead of StringEnumConverter [JsonConverter(typeof(JsonStringEnumConverter))]