C# WCF Rest Service - Nested JSON (without escaping)

Question

I have a basic web service that returns the following object as JSON:

public class GetCustomerResponse
{
  public Guid InteractionId { get; set; }
  public string CustomerInfo { get; set; }
}

The CustomerInfo member is also JSON so the return back to the caller contains escaped JSON, which to be honest is fair enough and to be expected

However, I would like the CustomerInfo JSON to be "embedded" within the response without any escaping. Does anybody know if this is possible and if so how?

The reason for having to deal with CustomerInfo as a string is because this is generated by a sub system that is not based on objects so all I get back is a raw JSON string.

I realised that this could be solved by creating a CustomerInfo class within the service however I would prefer to avoid this as this would be a large class with many members, more importantly it would require the service to be updated if any changes were made.

EDIT : I have accepted the answer from Sergey Kudriavtsev as this works, however in the end I opted for a different solution.

I have added the json.net libraries to the solution and edited my GetCustomer class as follows:

public Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject CustomerInfo { get; set; }

Then in code I have altered the service interface from:

GetCustomerResponse GetCustomer(int customerId)

to:

void GetCustomer(int customerId)

Then in the implementation of the interface I am doing the following

public void GetCustomer(int customerId)
{
  var customerJson = ... code to get json string ...

  var response = new GetCustomerResponse()
  {
    InteractionId = Guid.NewGuid(),
    CustomerInfo = JObject.Parse(customerJson)
  };

  string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(response, Formatting.Indented);

  HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/json; charset=utf-8";
  HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(json);
}

Sergii Kudriavtsev · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-18 11:50:38Z

1

I think the most correct way of doing this is creating a separate CustomerInfo class as you described.

However, if you don't want to do that then there are at least two alternatives:

1) Manually serialize your object to JSON, i.e. use something like

public string SerializeGetCustomer(GetCustomer data)
{
    return "{\"InteractionId\":\"" + data.InteractionId.ToString() + 
        "\",\"CustomerInfo\":" + data.CustomerInfo + "}";
}

2) Deserialize CustomerInfo into generic Dictionary<String, Object> (without creating specific class) and then serialize it back as a part of GetCustomer class, i.e.:

public class GetCustomer
{
  public Guid InteractionId { get; set; }
  public Dictionary<String, Object> CustomerInfo { get; set; }
  public GetCustomer(Guid interactionId, string customerInfo)
  {
    InteractionId = interactionId;
    CustomerInfo = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Dictionary<String,Object>>(customerInfo);
  }
}

...
string result = new JavaScriptSerializer.Serialize(new GetCustomer(interactionId, customerInfo));

answered Jun 18, 2012 at 11:50

Sergii Kudriavtsev

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2 Comments

MrEyes Over a year ago

Answer accepted as it works, however in the end I used an alternative solution (see question edit)

Sergii Kudriavtsev Over a year ago

@MrEyes: Thanks. As a note for future readers: your solution is almost identical to my second approach with Dictionary, the only difference is that you use more appropriate 3rd-party class for storing CustomerInfo.

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