Why System.Version in JSON string does not deserialize correctly?

Question

Context: I need to pass an object containing a large number of properties/fields (to UI Layer from Middle Tier Layer). Among this list of properties, one is of type Version which is not getting deserialized correctly from JSON string format. I have a chosen JSON format over XML as JSON serialization to string will return short string result.

Problem: System.Version does not get deserialized correctly. I have tried two different .NET Libraries. Following are the code snippets for each:

Code Snippet 1 using ServiceStack .NET library:

        var version = new Version(1, 2, 3, 0);
        string reportJSON = JsonSerializer.SerializeToString<Version>(version);
        //{"Major":1,"Minor":2,"Build":3,"Revision":0,"MajorRevision":0,"MinorRevision":0}


        Version report2 = JsonSerializer.DeserializeFromString<Version>(reportJSON);
        string reportJSON2 = JsonSerializer.SerializeToString<Version>(report2);
        //{"Major":0,"Minor":0,"Build":-1,"Revision":-1,"MajorRevision":-1,"MinorRevision":-1}

Code Snippet 2 using Newtonsoft .NET library but with same result:

        var version = new Version(1, 2, 3, 0);
        string reportJSON = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(version);
        //{"Major":1,"Minor":2,"Build":3,"Revision":0,"MajorRevision":0,"MinorRevision":0}


        Version report2 = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Version>(reportJSON);
        string reportJSON2 = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(report2);
        //{"Major":0,"Minor":0,"Build":-1,"Revision":-1,"MajorRevision":-1,"MinorRevision":-1}

How to fix this? Or Which other JSON.NET library can work correctly?

Answer 1

The Newtonsoft.Json library provides a set of common converters in the Newtonsoft.Json.Convertersnamespace, including a VersionConverter you can use to serialize and deserialize System.Version.

Note that you have to use the VersionConverterboth for serialization and deserialization, though.
That's because standard serialization would generate eg.:{"Major":1,"Minor":2,"Build":3,"Revision":0,"MajorRevision":0,"MinorRevision":0} while VersionConverterdeserialization expects a simple string as in "1.2.3".

So usage would be:

using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters;  

string s = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(version, new VersionConverter());
Version v = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Version>(s, new VersionConverter());

I'm not sure what's the first version of Newtonsoft.Jsonthat includes that converter. Mine has it and it's 5.0.6.