Question

Hi I’m hitting my head against the wall here…

I’m using DataContractJsonSerializer to encode data that I’m retrieving from the database which I’m sending back to an AJAX call…

I have this extension:

public static string ToJSON<T>(this T obj) where T : class
    {
        DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(T));
        using (MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream())
        {
            serializer.WriteObject(stream, obj);
            return Encoding.Default.GetString(stream.ToArray());
        }
    }

and I’m calling it from the ASMX:

return _webServiceService.GetSponsors().ToJSON();

Passing in the resultset from a Stored Procedure using Entity Framework

It’s all work kinda working, except this is part of what’s being returned:

{"d":"[{\"FileID\":296,\"IconUrl\":\"\\/Files\\/Banners\\/20119\\/00B56BAC.jpg\",\"ImageUrl\":....

How on earth to I get rid of the slashes so that it returns the following:

{"d":"[{"FileID":296,"IconUrl":"/Files/Banners/20119/00B56BAC.jpg","ImageUrl":....

I’m trying to implement the JQuery UI Autocomplete. Well I’m guessing this will sort it, not sure if I need the FileID value within quotes?

Answer 1

You don’t need to JSON serialize the return value by hand, because ASP.NET will handle it for you automatically in that scenario. What you’re seeing there is ASP.NET applying a second level of JSON serialization to your manually generated string, which requires escaping double quotes with backslashes.

Change your ASMX method to return something like List<Sponsor> and return _webServiceService.GetSponsors() directly, without the ToJSON() extension.