Question

Consider the following example:

public class BaseClass
{
    public string StringInBaseClass {get;set;}
    public int IntInBaseClass {get;set;}
}

public InheritingClass : BaseClass
{
     public long LongInInheritingClass {get;set;}
     public long ShortInInheritingClass {get;set;}
     public long CharInInheritingClass {get;set;}
}

Now, what I want to do is serialize JUST the inheriting properties to a JSON string. For example, I want to somehow create a JSON object out of just the 3 properties in InheritingClass, but if I do:

InheritingClass a = new InheritingClass();
JavaScriptSerializer jss = new JavaScriptSerializer(); 
string jsonString = jss.Serialize(a);

The jsonString value will have all of the properties of the BaseClass as well as all of the properties of InheritingClass. I understand that is normal, because I am inheriting all of those properties. What I am looking to do is NOT include those inherited properties and build a JSON string out of ONLY the 3 properties in InheritingClass.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Use the ScriptIgnoreAttribute on any property you don’t want serialized with the JavaScriptSerializer. With this you can do the following in your inherited class to stop a property from the base class from being serialized:

public class BaseClass
{
    public virtual string StringInBaseClass {get;set;}
    public int IntInBaseClass {get;set;}
}

public class InheritingClass : BaseClass
{
    [ScriptIgnore]
    public override string StringInBaseClass
    {
        get
        {
            return base.StringInBaseClass;
        }
        set
        {
            base.StringInBaseClass = value;
        }
    }
    public long LongInInheritingClass {get;set;}
    public long ShortInInheritingClass {get;set;}
    public long CharInInheritingClass {get;set;}
}