How do I add comments to Json.NET output?

Question

Is there a way I can automatically add comments to the serialised output from Json.NET?

Ideally, I'd imagine it's something similar to the following:

public class MyClass
{
    [JsonComment("My documentation string")]
    public string MyString { get; set; }
}

Or (even better if annotations can be avoided):

public class MyClass
{
    /// <summary>
    /// My documentation string
    /// </summary>
    public string MyString { get; set; }
}

Tthat would produce:

{
    // My documentation string
    "MyString": "Test"
}

The reason that I ask is that we use Json.NET to serialise a configuration file which could be changed by hand later on. I'd like to include documentation in my C# configuration classes and have that reproduced in the JSON to help whoever may have to change the file later.

---

As RoToRa points out below, comments are not technically allowed in the JSON specification (see the handy syntax diagrams at http://www.json.org). However, the features table on the Json.NET site includes:

Supports reading and writing comments

and Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextWriter.WriteComment(string) exists which does output a comment. I'm interested in a neat way of creating the comments rather than using the JsonTextWriter directly.

Answer 1

The Json.NET JsonSerializer doesn't automatically output comments when serializing. You'll need to write your JSON manually, either using JsonTextWriter or LINQ to JSON if you want comments