Question

I’m using ServiceStack to deserialize some HTML form values but can’t figure out how to override the value that each field should be read from.

For example, the form posts a value to first_name but the property on my POCO is called FirstName. how would I do mapping like that in ServiceStack

Answer 1

The ServiceStack Text serializers support [DataMember] aliases where you can use the Name parameter to specify what alias each field should be, e.g:

[DataContract]
public class Customer
{
    [DataMember(Name="first_name")]
    public string FirstName { get; set; }

    [DataMember(Name="last_name")]
    public string LastName { get; set; }
}

Note: Once you add [DataContract] / [DataMember] attributes to your DTOs then the behavior becomes opt-in and you will have add [DataMember] on each of the properties you want serialized.

Emitting idiomatic JSON for all DTOs

You can instruct JSON serialization to follow a different convention by specifying the following global settings:

//Emit {"firstName":"first","lastName":"last"}
JsConfig.Init(new Config { TextCase = TextCase.CamelCase });

//Emit {"first_name":"first","last_name":"last"}
JsConfig.Init(new Config { TextCase = TextCase.SnakeCase });