Question

Let’s say I have this object:

[JsonObject]
public class User
{
    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "id")]
    public string Id { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "birthday")]
    public DateTime Birthday { get; set; }
}

This will produce JSON like this:

{
   "id":null,
   "name":"Bob",
   "birthday":"/Date(374479200000-0600)/"
}

I’m looking for a way to add the classname around all this, for example:

{
   "user":{
      "id":null,
      "name":"Bob",
      "birthday":"/Date(374479200000-0600)/"
   }
}

Does JSON.NET have a way to do this? Thanks!

Edit

My reason for doing this was to connect a .NET client to a Rails web service. Rails puts a model’s attributes under a namespace, so I was looking for a way for .NET to conform to this.

However, after reading a bit about Backbone.js, it looks like a possible alternative would be to disable this behavior in Rails:

If you’re working with a Rails backend, you’ll notice that Rails’
default to_json implementation includes a model’s attributes under a
namespace. To disable this behavior for seamless Backbone integration,
set:

ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json = false

Answer 1

If you want to do this just for the root object, I think the simplest way is just to enclose the object in a way that it gets serialized the way you want:

static object AddTypeName(object o)
{
    return new Dictionary<string, object> 
    {
        { o.GetType().Name.ToLowerInvariant(), o }
    };
}