Question

I only want the first depth level of an object (I do not want any children). I am willing to use any library available. Most libraries will merely throw an exception when the recursion depth is reached, instead of just ignoring. If this isn’t possible, is there a way to ignore serialization of certain members given a certain datatype?

Edit:
Let’s say I have an object like so:

class MyObject
{
    String name = "Dan";
    int age = 88;
    List<Children> myChildren = ...(lots of children with lots of grandchildren);
}

I want to remove any children (complex types even) to return an object like this:

class MyObject
{
    String name = "Dan";
    int age = 88;
    List<Children> myChildren = null;
}

Answer 1

This is possible in Json.NET using some coordination between the JsonWriter and the serializer’s ContractResolver.

A custom JsonWriter increments a counter when an object is started and then decrements it again when it ends.

public class CustomJsonTextWriter : JsonTextWriter
{
    public CustomJsonTextWriter(TextWriter textWriter) : base(textWriter) {}

    public int CurrentDepth { get; private set; }

    public override void WriteStartObject()
    {
        CurrentDepth++;
        base.WriteStartObject();
    }

    public override void WriteEndObject()
    {
        CurrentDepth--;
        base.WriteEndObject();
    }
}

A custom ContractResolver applies a special ShouldSerialize predicate on all properties that will be used to verify the current depth.

public class CustomContractResolver : DefaultContractResolver
{
    private readonly Func<bool> _includeProperty;

    public CustomContractResolver(Func<bool> includeProperty)
    {
        _includeProperty = includeProperty;
    }

    protected override JsonProperty CreateProperty(
        MemberInfo member, MemberSerialization memberSerialization)
    {
        var property = base.CreateProperty(member, memberSerialization);
        var shouldSerialize = property.ShouldSerialize;
        property.ShouldSerialize = obj => _includeProperty() &&
                                          (shouldSerialize == null ||
                                           shouldSerialize(obj));
        return property;
    }
}

The following method shows how these two custom classes work together.

public static string SerializeObject(object obj, int maxDepth)
{
    using (var strWriter = new StringWriter())
    {
        using (var jsonWriter = new CustomJsonTextWriter(strWriter))
        {
            Func<bool> include = () => jsonWriter.CurrentDepth <= maxDepth;
            var resolver = new CustomContractResolver(include);
            var serializer = new JsonSerializer {ContractResolver = resolver};
            serializer.Serialize(jsonWriter, obj);
        }
        return strWriter.ToString();
    }
}

The following test code demonstrates limiting the maximum depth to 1 and 2 levels respectively.

var obj = new Node {
    Name = "one",
    Child = new Node {
        Name = "two",
        Child = new Node {
            Name = "three"
        }
    }
};
var txt1 = SerializeObject(obj, 1);
var txt2 = SerializeObject(obj, 2);

public class Node
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public Node Child { get; set; }
}