Question

I’m using MVC web Api for RESTful purpose. My controller methods return serialized Json object in string format. I’ve got some simple method like this:

public string Put(Folder folder)
{
   var folder1 = new Folder{Id="1", IsShared=true,Name= folder.Name};
   var jsSerializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
   return jsSerializer.Serialize(folder1);
}

I call Get, Put, Delete and Post methods in QUnit test like this and it works fine:

ajax: {
        getData: function (url, data) {
            return processRequest(url, data, "GET");
        },

        postData: function (url, data) {
            return processRequest(url, JSON.stringify(data),"POST");
        },

        updateData: function (url, data) {
            return processRequest(url, JSON.stringify(data),"UPDATE");
        },

        deleteData: function (url, data) {
            return processRequest(url, JSON.stringify(data),"DELETE");
        },

        processRequest: function (url, data, type) {
            return $.ajax({
                type: type,
                dataType: "json",
                contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8",
                url: url,
                data: data,
                processData: true
            });
        }
    },

I need to change return value from string to actual Json object because my client doesn’t want serialized Json anymore. They need actual Json object. So I changed the method return type to JsonValue and parse the serialized Json object using JsonValue.Parse() method. When I trace my codes in server side, JsonValue object has proper values in its properties and looks fine but the returned JsonValue in client side has empty properties. here is changed method:

public JsonValue Put(Folder folder)
{
   var folder1 = new Folder{Id="1", IsShared=true,Name= folder.Name};
   var jsSerializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
   return JsonValue.Parse(jsSerializer.Serialize(folder1));
}

here is test result:

Expected:   
{
  "Id": "1",
  "IsShared": true,
  "Name": "abc"
}

Actual:
{
  "Id": [],
  "IsShared": [],
  "Name": []
}

I appreciate any idea.

Answer 1

What I did to fix is adding Newtonsoft.Json.dll to my project and using Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JToken instead of using System.Json.JsonValue. here is my method implementation:

  public Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JToken Put(Folder folder)
  {
     var folder1 = new Folder{Id="1", IsShared=true,Name = folder.Name};
     var jsSerializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
     return Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JObject.Parse(jsSerializer.Serialize(folder1));
  }

and if you have an array of JSON, you need to parse like this:

public Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JToken Put(IList<Folder> folders)
      {
         var folder1 = new Folder{Id="1", IsShared=true,Name = folder.Name};
         var jsSerializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
         return Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray.Parse(jsSerializer.Serialize(folders));
      }