WebApi POST + [ISerializable] + JSON .NET

At work, I have taken on the task of building a small utility web site for admin needs. The thing is I wanted it to be very self contained so I have opted for this:

• Self hosted web API
• JSON data exchanges
• Aurelia.IO front end
• Raven DB database

So I set out to create a nice web API endpoint like this:

private IDocumentStore _store;

public LoginController(IDocumentStore store)
{
	_store = store;
}

[HttpPost]
public IHttpActionResult Post(LoginUser loginUser)
{
    //
}

Where I then had this datamodel that I was trying to post via the awesome AWEWSOME REST plugin for Chrome.

using System;
 
namespace Model
{
    [Serializable]
    public class LoginUser
    {
        public LoginUser()
        {
 
        }
 
        public LoginUser(string userName, string password)
        {
            UserName = userName;
            Password = password;
        }
 
        public string UserName { get; set; }
        public string Password { get; set; }
 
        public override string ToString()
        {
            returnstring.Format("UserName: {0}, Password: {1}", UserName, Password);
        }
    }
}

This just would not work, I could see the endpoint being called ok, but no matter what I did, the LoginUser model only the post would always have NULL properties. After a little fiddling, I removed the [Serializable] attribute and it all just started to work.

Turns out this is to do with the way JSON.NET works when it sees the [Serializable] attribute.

For example, if you had this model:

[Serializable]
public class ResortModel
{
    public int ResortKey { get; set; }
    public string ResortName { get; set; }
}

Without the [Serializable] attribute, the JSON output is:

{
    "ResortKey": 1,
    "ResortName": "Resort A"
}

With the [Serializable] attribute, the JSON output is:

{
    "<ResortKey>k__BackingField": 1,
    "<ResortName>k__BackingField": "Resort A"
}

I told one of my colleagues about this, and he found this article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29962044/using-serializable-attribute-on-model-in-webapi which explains it all nicely including how to fix it.

Hope that helps!