Make JSON.NET and Serializable attribute work together

Question

I'm using JSON.NET and had some troubles in the past during WEBAPI objects deserialization. After doing some research I've found that the class was marked with [Serializable]. When I removed this the deserialization was just fine.

More detailed information about this can be found here:

Why won't Web API deserialize this but JSON.Net will?

Now it comes to the problem that I use binaryformatter to create a hash value calculated from this object class. But Binaryformatter requires that the class must be marked as [Serializable].

Could you recommend me any approach to make both things work at the same time?

Answer 1

Found the solution:

First, check that your Newtonsoft.JSON version is greater than 4.5 or just update with NuGET

According to the version notes, both can work together starting from this version using some extra annotations.

http://james.newtonking.com/archive/2012/04/11/json-net-4-5-release-2-serializable-support-and-bug-fixes

"Now if you are serializing types that have the attribute and don’t want the new behaviour, it can either be overridden on a type using the JsonObjectAttribute"

[JsonObject]
[Serializable]
public class Foobar {

Now it is possible to use JSON.NET and, in my case, the binaryformatter with the [Serializable] attribute.

Answer 2

An alternative to specifying JsonObject on each class is to tell web.api to ignore Serialize attributes globally. This can be done by resetting the DefaultContractResolver on the web api JsonFormatter:

config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SerializerSettings.ContractResolver = new DefaultContractResolver();

(using NewtonSoft.Json.Serialization where config is the System.Web.Http.HttpConfiguration)

As of NewtonSoft v4.5 the IgnoreSerializableAttribute property on the DefaultContractResolver is set to true but the web api wrapper, around DefaultContractResolver, has this set to false by default.