Question

How do I serialize an object into query-string format? I can’t seem to find an answer on google. Thanks.

Here is the object I will serialize as an example.

public class EditListItemActionModel
{
    public int? Id { get; set; }
    public int State { get; set; }
    public string Prefix { get; set; }
    public string Index { get; set; }
    public int? ParentID { get; set; }
}

Answer 1

I’m 99% sure there’s no built-in utility method for this. It’s not a very common task, since a web server doesn’t typically respond with a URLEncoded key/value string.

How do you feel about mixing reflection and LINQ? This works:

var foo = new EditListItemActionModel() {
  Id = 1,
  State = 26,
  Prefix = "f",
  Index = "oo",
  ParentID = null
};

var properties = from p in foo.GetType().GetProperties()
                 where p.GetValue(foo, null) != null
                 select p.Name + "=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(p.GetValue(foo, null).ToString());

// queryString will be set to "Id=1&State=26&Prefix=f&Index=oo"                  
string queryString = String.Join("&", properties.ToArray());

Update:

To write a method that returns the QueryString representation of any 1-deep object, you could do this:

public string GetQueryString(object obj) {
  var properties = from p in obj.GetType().GetProperties()
                   where p.GetValue(obj, null) != null
                   select p.Name + "=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(p.GetValue(obj, null).ToString());

  return String.Join("&", properties.ToArray());
}

// Usage:
string queryString = GetQueryString(foo);

You could also make it an extension method without much additional work

public static class ExtensionMethods {
  public static string GetQueryString(this object obj) {
    var properties = from p in obj.GetType().GetProperties()
                     where p.GetValue(obj, null) != null
                     select p.Name + "=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(p.GetValue(obj, null).ToString());

    return String.Join("&", properties.ToArray());
  }
}

// Usage:
string queryString = foo.GetQueryString();