Question

I have a class that looks like this:

public class MyModel{

  public int TheId { get; set; }
  public int ....
  public string ....
}

I have another class that take a list of several types, including MyModel, and serializes the lists in json. It has several methods, one for each type of list.

public class ToJson{

  public string MyModelToJson (List<MyModel> TheListOfMyModel) {

      string ListOfMyModelInJson = "";

      JavascriptSerializer TheSerializer = new ....
      TheSerializer.RegisterConverters(....
      ListOfMyModelInJson = TheSerializer.Serialize(TheListOfMyModel);

      return ListOfMyModelInJson;
   }

   public string MyOtherModelToJson (List<MyOtherModel> TheListOfOtherModel) {....}

   public string YetAnotherModelToJson (List<YetAnotherModelToJson> TheListOfYetAnotherModelToJson) {....}

}

What I want to do is encapsulate the serializing into MyModel, something like this:

public class MyModel{

  public int TheId { get; set; }
  public int ....
  public string ....

  public string MyModelToJson()
}

How can I encapsulate a method into an object so that it’s available for a list of objects?

I thought of doing a foreach loop but that gets messy because in the calling method, you have to manipulate the json strings of each object in the list and concatenate them.

Let me know of OO principles of encapsulation apply in this case.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Answer 1

One way would be to define your ToJson as accepting a generic type:

public class ToJson<T>{

  public string MyModelToJson (List<T> TheListOfMyModel) {

  string ListOfMyModelInJson = "";

  JavascriptSerializer TheSerializer = new ....
  TheSerializer.RegisterConverters(....

  ListOfMyModelInJson = TheSerializer.Serialize(TheListOfMyModel);
  return ListOfMyModelInJson;
  }
}