Question

i have a method like this:

public JObject Get(int id)
        {
            return new JObject(new JProperty("Test", "Test"));
        }

It works fine if I request JSON, but if I request XML i get an HTTP-Errorcode 500 from the web api framework (no exception).
It seems likely that the XMLformatter thinks he can write json.
I can test it with:

bool test = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.XmlFormatter.CanWriteType(typeof(JArray));
            bool test2 = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.XmlFormatter.CanWriteType(typeof(JObject));
            bool test3 = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.XmlFormatter.CanWriteType(typeof(JProperty));
            bool test4 = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.XmlFormatter.CanWriteType(typeof(JValue));

It always returns “true”.
I dont want to remove the xmlformatter, but it is not acceptable that the server throws an HTTP Error 500 which I dont produce and cant solve.
The best would be that the XMLformatter can serialize the object…

Answer 1

DataContractSerializer does not support anonymous/dynamic types (or even generic “object”). That’s why it’s not getting serialized to XML.

If you want XML serialization, you have to use strongly typed objects.