I have a class that contains an enum
property, and upon serializing the object using JavaScriptSerializer
, my json result contains the integer value of the enumeration rather than its string
"name". Is there a way to get the enum as a string
in my json without having to create a custom JavaScriptConverter
? Perhaps there's an attribute that I could decorate the enum
definition, or object property, with?
As an example:
enum Gender { Male, Female }
class Person
{
int Age { get; set; }
Gender Gender { get; set; }
}
Desired json result:
{ "Age": 35, "Gender": "Male" }
Ideally looking for answer with built-in .NET framework classes, if not possible alternatives (like Json.net) are welcome.
I have found that Json.NET provides the exact functionality I'm looking for with a StringEnumConverter
attribute:
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters;
[JsonConverter(typeof(StringEnumConverter))]
public Gender Gender { get; set; }
More details at available on StringEnumConverter
documentation.
There are other places to configure this converter more globally:
enum itself if you want enum always be serialized/deserialized as string:
[JsonConverter(typeof(StringEnumConverter))]
enum Gender { Male, Female }
In case anyone wants to avoid attribute decoration, you can add the converter to your JsonSerializer (suggested by Bjørn Egil):
serializer.Converters.Add(new Newtonsoft.Json.Converters.StringEnumConverter());
and it will work for every enum it sees during that serialization (suggested by Travis).
or JsonConverter (suggested by banana):
JsonConvert.SerializeObject(MyObject,
new Newtonsoft.Json.Converters.StringEnumConverter());
Additionally you can control casing and whether numbers are still accepted by using StringEnumConverter(NamingStrategy, Boolean) constructor.