Is there any way to control JSON formatting with the WCF Web API?

Question

With the upcoming WCF Web API, is there any way to control JSON output?

I'd like to change the casing and perhaps suppress that certain properties are included when a class is being serialized.

As an example, consider this very simply class:

[XmlRoot("catalog", Namespace = "http://api.247e.com/catalog/2012")]
public class Catalog
{
    [XmlArray(ElementName = "link-templates")]
    public LinkTemplate[] LinkTemplates { get; set; }
}

As you can see, I've added various XML attributes to it in order to control how it's serialized in XML. Can I do the same (or something else) for JSON?

For reference, here's a sample output in XML:

<catalog xmlns="http://api.247e.com/catalog/2012"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <link-templates>
        <link-template href="http://localhost:9000/search/?criterion={criterion}"
                       rel="http://docs.247e.com/rels/search"/>
    </link-templates>
</catalog>

For JSON, the equivalent result is this:

{
  "LinkTemplates":
  [
    {
      "Href":"http:\/\/localhost:9000\/search\/?criterion={criterion}",
      "Rel":"http:\/\/docs.247e.com\/rels\/search"
    }
  ]
}

However, I'd like to change the casing of the properties, so I'd prefer something like this instead:

{
  "linkTemplates":
  [
    {
      "href":"http:\/\/localhost:9000\/search\/?criterion={criterion}",
      "rel":"http:\/\/docs.247e.com\/rels\/search"
    }
  ]
}

A way to strip away certain class properties would also be nice.

Answer 1

The WCF Web API used the DataContractJsonSerializer by default to return a resource in a JSON format. So you should be using the DataContract and DataMember attributes on you class to shape the JSON result.

[DataContract]
public class Book
{
    [DataMember(Name = "id")]
    public int Id { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Name = "title")]
    public string Title { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Name = "author")]
    public string Author { get; set; }
    [XmlIgnore] // Don't send this one
    public string ImageName { get; set; }
}

Answer 2

Try using the JSON.NET Formatter from the WCF Web API Contrib project on codeplex. Attributes like shown here should help you https://json.svn.codeplex.com/svn/trunk/Doc/SerializationAttributes.html

Answer 3

JSON.NET has several attribute options which can control what is serialized and how. http://james.newtonking.com/projects/json/help/