prevent property from being serialized in web API

user_1330271 0
Viewed 180966

I'm using an MVC 4 web API and asp.net web forms 4.0 to build a rest API. It's working great:

[HttpGet]
public HttpResponseMessage Me(string hash)
{
    HttpResponseMessage httpResponseMessage;
    List<Something> somethings = ...

    httpResponseMessage = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, 
                                 new { result = true, somethings = somethings });

    return httpResponseMessage;
}

Now I need to prevent some properties to be serialized. I know I can use some LINQ over the list and get only the properties I need, and generally it's a good approach, but in the present scenario the something object is too complex, and I need a different set of properties in different methods, so it's easier to mark, at runtime, each property to be ignored.

Is there a way to do that?

asp.net-web-api asp.net-mvc asp.net c#
12 Answers

Works fine by just adding the: [IgnoreDataMember]

On top of the propertyp, like:

public class UserSettingsModel
{
    public string UserName { get; set; }
    [IgnoreDataMember]
    public DateTime Created { get; set; }
}

This works with ApiController. The code:

[Route("api/Context/UserSettings")]
    [HttpGet, HttpPost]
    public UserSettingsModel UserSettings()
    {
        return _contextService.GetUserSettings();
    }
user_64227850

For .NET Core 3.0 and above:

The default JSON serializer for ASP.NET Core is now System.Text.Json, which is new in .NET Core 3.0. Consider using System.Text.Json when possible. It's high-performance and doesn't require an additional library dependency.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/migration/22-to-30?view=aspnetcore-3.1&tabs=visual-studio#newtonsoftjson-jsonnet-support

Sample (Thanks cuongle)

using System.Text.Json.Serialization;

public class Foo
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [JsonIgnore]
    public List<Something> Somethings { get; set; }
}

If you already have Newtonsoft.Json intalled and chose to use it instead, by default, [JsonIgnore] won't work as expected.

user_29098510
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