Question

I want to build a service that will pass the data read from the database to the client in JSON format. I don’t know the schema table and the types.

I thought about implementing the WCF over Dictionary but the JSON is very complicated and contains objects like “key = …; value = …” and i want just “key=value” and i need to return list of Dictionary objects. Sometimes from database i will receive a comma separated array, so i will insert in my Dictionary a key with a new Dictionary as value.

In PHP my boss said that it can be done through associative arrays. Please help me with some ideas or link because i don’t know where to start to look.

If there is something that you didn’t understood please comment and i will try another explanation.

Edits:

1. I need it to be a rest service, so JSON is mandatory.
2. How can i load data from the table ? What type can i use ?

Edit #2 : This is what i want to get : CorectJSON

Edit #3 : This is my current json :

stdClass Object
(
    [areaGetStreetTypesResult] => stdClass Object
        (
            [responseMessage] => [{"name":"IMPASSE","street_type":"IMP"}{"name":"LOTISSEMENT","street_type":"LOT"}{"name":"ROUTE","street_type":"RTE"}{"name":"RUE","street_type":"RUE"}]
            [response_status] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [message] => Success : JSON created into the responseMessage variable !
                    [status] => 0
                )

        )

)

Is not containing some commas between so it cannot be decoded by php. What should i do ?

This is my method Code

Answer 1

What is the reason why you need to pass JSON? If you want to create a WCF REST service, it is sufficient to tell WCF to create JSON messages as described here: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/327420/WCF-REST-Service-with-JSON

If you access the service from a C# application, you don’t need to care about how data is passed back and forth. Just take “normal” method parameters and use return values like you’d do locally and you’re set.

Example:

string[] GetResultStrings(List<Rectangle> sourceRectangles);

If you really need to pass JSON strings, just pass strings and use the JSON serializer and deserializer to encode the reply and decode the parameters.

For example:

string GetJSONString(string jsonRequest);

The following information may help on using the JSON serializer and deserializer: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/272335/JSON-Serialization-and-Deserialization-in-ASP-NET

EDIT
I’m using the following method to serialize serializable objects to JSON:

public static string SerializeJSON(this object obj)
{
    DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(obj.GetType());
    using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
    {
        serializer.WriteObject(ms, obj);
        return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray());
    }
}

This works just fine for any DataContract class like:

[DataContract]
public class MyJSONReturnableClass
{
    [DataMember]
    public string ThisBecomesANamedString;

    [DataMember]
    public MyJSONReturnableClass[] AndWorksAlsoForNestedArrays;
}