prevent property from being serialized in web API

Question

I'm using an MVC 4 web API and asp.net web forms 4.0 to build a rest API. It's working great:

[HttpGet]
public HttpResponseMessage Me(string hash)
{
    HttpResponseMessage httpResponseMessage;
    List<Something> somethings = ...

    httpResponseMessage = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, 
                                 new { result = true, somethings = somethings });

    return httpResponseMessage;
}

Now I need to prevent some properties to be serialized. I know I can use some LINQ over the list and get only the properties I need, and generally it's a good approach, but in the present scenario the something object is too complex, and I need a different set of properties in different methods, so it's easier to mark, at runtime, each property to be ignored.

Is there a way to do that?

Answer 1

ASP.NET Web API uses Json.Net as default formatter, so if your application just only uses JSON as data format, you can use [JsonIgnore] to ignore property for serialization:

public class Foo
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [JsonIgnore]
    public List<Something> Somethings { get; set; }
}

But, this way does not support XML format. So, in case your application has to support XML format more (or only support XML), instead of using Json.Net, you should use [DataContract] which supports both JSON and XML:

[DataContract]
public class Foo
{
    [DataMember]
    public int Id { get; set; }
    [DataMember]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    //Ignore by default
    public List<Something> Somethings { get; set; }
}

For more understanding, you can read the official article.