Question

I created a ASP.NET MVC 4 Web application. Within this application i implemented several rest webservices and here comes my question: Is it possible to force the object serialization to use the enum entity names instead of their values?

This is my enum:

    public enum ReturnCode { OK, InvalidParameter }

This is what I get:

{
   "returnCode": 0,
   "data": null
}

But this is what I want:

{
   "returnCode": OK,
   "data": null
}

Is there a way to achieve this?

Answer 1

You can use a JsonConverter.

There is a native one for JSON.Net StringEnumConverter mentioned in this question JSON serialization of enum as string

Either anotate your property:

[JsonConverter(typeof(StringEnumConverter))]
public enum ReturnCode { OK, InvalidParameter }

Or use the config examples in WebApi Json.NET custom date handling to register in the global serialiser settings.