Question

I have been trying out both Linq to Sql and EF in my ASP.NET MVC application. After switching to EF I realized my XML/JSON serialization output has extra cruft.

XML:

<Test xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'>   <EntityKey>     <EntitySetName>Persons</EntitySetName>     <EntityContainerName>PersonEntities</EntityContainerName>     <EntityKeyValues>       <EntityKeyMember>         <Key>Id</Key>         <Value xsi:type='xsd:int'>1</Value>       </EntityKeyMember>     </EntityKeyValues>   </EntityKey>   <Id>1</Id>   <Name>John</Name> </Test> 

JSON:

{'Id':1,'Name':'John','EntityState':2,'EntityKey'{'EntitySetName':'Persons','EntityContainerName':'PersonEntities','EntityKeyValues':[{'Key':'Id','Value':1}],'IsTemporary':false}} 

Instead I would just like my output to be:

{'Id':1, 'Name':'John'} 

My EF query to retrieve the object is:

Tests.First(t => t.Id == testId); 

Answer 1

You can shape the JSON result in your controller like this:

public JsonResult Person(int id) {   var person = PersonRepository.FindByID(id);   var result = new { Id = person.Id, Name = person.Name };   return Json(result); } 

This will limit the DTO which is serialized to contain only the values you want.

Edit: As a paritial answer to your comment question; you can create a simpler PersonViewModel class (DTO) that you can map the properties to. As John Saunders mentioned in his answer Automapper is a nice way to simplify the copying of the property values out of the EF Person instance:

The modified Action method may look like this:

public JsonResult Person(int id) {   var person = PersonRepository.FindByID(id);   var dto = Mapper.Map<Person, PersonViewModel>(person);   return Json(dto); } 

The only other option I can think of is to use reflection to modify the DataMemberAttributes on the Person entity to suppress the EntityKey property.