how to customize the JSON serialized name in MVC4 Web API?

Question

I have searched web for my question without success, so I post question here.

I am using MVC4 Web API for providing JSON data to client. Because C# uses Pascal naming convention, so by default the client received JSON data are also in Pascal naming convention, how do I customize this to return camel naming convention in JSON?

another issue is how to change the serialized name? for example, in C# I have a property named "Description", but in order to reduce the data size, I would like to serialize it as "descr" in JSON, how to achieve this?

Answer 1

I know this is an old post, but I thought it was worth adding a reference to Json.Net:

API Reference

Nuget Page

You can set the name that each property will serialize to and from using the JsonProperty attribute:

public class MyModel
{
    [JsonProperty("myJsonProp")]
    public string MyJsonProperty { get; set; }
}

Usage:

//Serialize
var json = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject(instanceOfMyModel);

//De-serialize
var deserialized = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeSerializeOject<MyModel>(json);

The resulting Json:

"{
    "myJsonProp" : "value"
}"