Question

I’m using .net’s JavaScriptSerializer and when serializing an object, enums are serialized as their int value instead of their string name, which kind of defeats the purpose of an enum. How do I get it to serialize all enums to their string name instead? Can I accomplish this with the built-in serializer, or is there a better one I should be using?

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Newtonsoft’s JsonNet serializer has this functionality built in with an enum converter.

Download it here: http://json.codeplex.com/

using Newtonsoft.Json;

using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters;

var objToSerialize = new Object();

var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings();
settings.Converters.Add(new StringEnumConverter());

var serializer = JsonSerializer.Create(settings);

var sb = new StringBuilder();
using (var sw = new StringWriter(sb))
{
    serializer.Serialize(sw, objToSerialize);
}

string json = sb.ToString();