Force Framework to use Enum Entity Name instead of its Value [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

JavaScriptSerializer - JSON serialization of enum as string (31 answers)

Closed 11 years ago.

I created a ASP.NET MVC 4 Web application. Within this application i implemented several rest webservices and here comes my question: Is it possible to force the object serialization to use the enum entity names instead of their values?

This is my enum:

 public enum ReturnCode { OK, InvalidParameter }

This is what I get:

{
 "returnCode": 0,
 "data": null
}

But this is what I want:

{
 "returnCode": OK,
 "data": null
}

Is there a way to achieve this?

• Roland Mai: Just add another property that returns the string version of the enum.
• adt: stackoverflow.com/questions/2441290/…

Answer 1

You can use a JsonConverter.

There is a native one for JSON.Net StringEnumConverter mentioned in this question JSON serialization of enum as string

Either anotate your property:

[JsonConverter(typeof(StringEnumConverter))]
public enum ReturnCode { OK, InvalidParameter }

Or use the config examples in WebApi Json.NET custom date handling to register in the global serialiser settings.

Answer 2

Difficult to make a suggestion without better understanding of your usage patterns...but none the less.

Make the enum a private field.

Built a public string property with a getter which returns the entity name of the private enum field and a setter which uses Enum.Parse to set the private field value

Answer 3

Yes you can do that. You need to declare additional string property and use it when serializing/deserializing.

Example:

[DataContract]
public class MyResource
{
 [DataMember]
 public string Data { get; set; }
 public ReturnCode Code { get; set; }
 [DataMember(Name = "returnCode")]
 string ReturnCodeString
 {
 get { return this.Code.ToString(); }
 set
 {
 ReturnCode r;
 this.Code = Enum.TryParse(value, true, out r) ? r : ReturnCode.OK;
 }
 }
}

So now you can pass the value of enum as a string (in both direction from server and from client) i.e.:

{
 "returnCode": "OK",
 "data": null
}

or

{
 "returnCode": "InvalidParameter",
 "data": null
}