To clarify…
I configure my WebApiConfig like so:
config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SerializerSettings.Binder = new TypeNameSerializationBinder("namespace.{0}, assembly");
config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SerializerSettings.TypeNameHandling = TypeNameHandling.Auto;
This should allow me to bind derived classes to base class.
And binder does work when WebApi serializes objects to JSON, and sends them to client, but when I post them back to server, the binder isn’t used (BindToType method never gets called), and my objects get bound to base class.
When i serialize/deserialize objects manually with this settings it all works fine.
Any ideas?
After some research, I found that this is a bug in ASP.NET Web Api. When the url encoded parameters are parsed, it just creates a new JsonSerializer (without passing global settings).
I filed it here
http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/workitem/609