Question

I have a model like this

public class Category : BaseFieldsTables
{
        public ICollection<Category> Categories { get; set; }
        public Category Parent { get; set; }
        public int? ParentId { get; set; }
}

i want to serialize the model to json and this is my controller

    var categories =
            _efCategory.List().ToList().
                ToList().
                Select(x => new {id = x.Id, title = x.Name, children = x.Parent});

        string output = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(categories, Formatting.Indented,
                                                    new JsonSerializerSettings
                                                        {
                                                            PreserveReferencesHandling = PreserveReferencesHandling.Objects
                                                        });

        return Json(output.Replace, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);

but i get this result

    "[\r\n  {\r\n    \"$id\": \"1\",\r\n    \"id\": 1,\r\n    \"title\": \"News\",\r\n    \"children\": null\r\n  },\r\n  {\r\n    \"$id\": \"2\",\r\n    \"id\": 2,\r\n    \"title\": \"2012\",\r\n    \"children\":
 {\r\n      \"$id\": \"3\",\r\n      \"Categories\": [\r\n        {\r\n          \"$id\": 

Answer 1

This is normal. All you are seeing is the escaped version of your string (probably directly in Visual Studio). \r\n is the equivalent of a newline character and \" is just a means to escape the ". Outputted, this should appear as normal.