Is the Json.NET JsonSerializer threadsafe?

Question

I'm trying to reduce the amount of garbage my web service generates, and I noticed that we're creating a new Json.NET JsonSerializer instance for each request. It is not the most lightweight object ever, so I'm wondering if I can just create a single instance and reuse it for all requests. Primarily this requires that it be threadsafe during serialization and deserialization.

The documentation doesn't say whether it's threadsafe or not.

Inspecting the code it appears that the serialization and deserialization methods are threadsafe, as long as you don't change any settings on the object at the same time. However, it's a complex class so I'm not 100% sure of my analysis.

Has anyone tried reusing instances of JsonSerializer and had it work or not? Are there any known problems with reusing it?

Answer 1

Inspecting the code it appears that the serialization and deserialization methods are threadsafe, as long as you don't change any settings on the object at the same time.

Correct, JsonSerializer is threadsafe.

No state is shared while serializing but if you change a setting on the JsonSerializer while in the middle of serializing an object then those will automatically be used.

Answer 2

According to the Feature Comparison on the Newtonsoft site, it is thread safe, as are DataContractJsonSerializer and JavaScriptSerializer.

Answer 3

If you don't use references, JsonSerializer is thread-safe. There are however a few issues when using references in a multi-threaded context.

First, there is a bug in the default ReferenceResolver that may cause duplicate reference id's to be used. See the GitHub issue here.

Secondly, when reusing a JsonSerializer the default ReferenceResolver is stateful so that if you use references your reference ids will continue to increment with each serialization call you make instead of starting at 1 for each. I created a GitHub issue to address this problem here.