Why is my JavaScriptSerializer returning empty json objects?

Question

I have a list of data points, as defined below:

public class Point {
    string Rate;
    string Date;
    string Number;

    public Point(string Rate, string Date, string Number)
    {
        this.Rate = Rate;
        this.Date = Date;
        this.Number = Number;
    }
}

Then within my code I have:

List<Point> points = populatedList;
JavaScriptSerializer javaScriptSerializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();

string text = javaScriptSerializer.Serialize(points);

System.IO.File.WriteAllText(@"C:\Users\Public\WriteText.txt", text);

When I go to view "WriteText.txt", however, all I have is a bunch of empty brackets: {}, {}, {} ... I have also tried doing this with only one point, and then I am left with only one matching pair of brackets. I then tried serializing a string object alone and that worked fine. Why is the JavaScriptSerializer not behaving as expected?

Answer 1

The access level for class members and struct members, including nested classes and structs, is private by default. - Access Modifiers^MSDN

As a result of that, the serialization will not see those properties. In order for them to be serialized, they need to be marked as public. They also need to have a public getter in order for the serializer to read the property.

public string Rate { get; set; }
public string Date { get; set; }
public string Number { get; set; }