Passing complex JSON data jQuery to Action

Question

I have 2 classes that are used to mirror the data from an ajax call. One (Customer) contains a property which is name, and the other is an array of Products.

Public Class Customer
    Private _Name as String
    Private _Products as Product()

    Public Property Name() As String
        Get
            Return _Name 
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            _Name = value
        End Set
    End Property

    Public Property Products() As Product()
        Get
            Return _Products
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Product())
            _Products= value
        End Set
    End Property

and the ajax call:

$.ajax({
        url: '../../Customer/SaveCustomerData',
        type: "POST",
        dataType: "json",
        data: { "Name": this.Name,
                "Products": [{ "ProductCode": "product 1", "ProductName": "product 1" },
                             { "ProductCode": "product 2", "ProductName": "product 2"}]
        },
        success: function(data) {
            alert("Customer has been saved!");
        }
    });

The value for Customer.Name is reflected but the properties of the Products remain nothing while still having a length of 2.

Am I missing something really important here?

Answer 1

Right now you're not passing JSON, you're passing the data as it is, (serialized with $.param())...which looks like this:

Name=something&Products%5B0%5D%5BProductCode%5D=product+1&Products%5B0%5D%5BProductName%5D=product+1&Products%5B1%5D%5BProductCode%5D=product+2&Products%5B1%5D%5BProductName%5D=product+2

To pass JSON, you need to stringify it, like this:

data: JSON.stringify({ "Name": this.Name,
        "Products": [{ "ProductCode": "product 1", "ProductName": "product 1" },
                     { "ProductCode": "product 2", "ProductName": "product 2"}]
       }),

Which looks like this:

{"Name":"something","Products":[{"ProductCode":"product 1","ProductName":"product 1"},{"ProductCode":"product 2","ProductName":"product 2"}]}

Now that's something your model can turn back into an object. For older browsers (< IE8) which don't support native JSON, include json2.js which will emulate the behavior.