CLR Object and JSON Serialization and Deserialization

Introduction

This article demonstrates how to serialize and deserialize CLR objects for web-based applications. This article starts with an introduction to the System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer class. After that, a small code snippet is given for it and where exactly this approach fits into the web-based application
 
Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.script.serialization.javascriptserializer.aspx

System.Object
System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer

Namespace: System.Web.Script.Serialization

Assembly: System.Web.Extensions (in System.Web.Extensions.dll)

Provides serialization and deserialization functionality for AJAX-enabled applications.

Creating CLR object

A plain CLS object, which has a few classes, attributes and necessary methods as shown below:

    class Person

    {

        public string firstName, lastName, Designation;

        public ushort age;

        public string[] technologies;

        public Address personAddress;

 

 

        public override string ToString()

        {

            base.ToString();

 

            return string.Format(

                @"Name: {0} {1}

                Designation: {2}

                Age: {3}

                Skills: {4}

                Address: {5} {6}, {7}",

                this.firstName,this.lastName,

                this.Designation,

                this.age,

                string.Join(",", this.technologies),

                this.personAddress.addressLine, this.personAddress.city, this.personAddress.country);

        }

    }

    

class Address

    {

        public string addressLine, city, country;

    }

Initiating and printing the CLR object to the console:
 

  Person I = new Person();

  I.firstName = "Adil";

  I.lastName = "Ansari";

  I.Designation = "Consultant";

  I.age=25;

  Address personAddres = new Address() { addressLine = "Vikhroli LBS West", 

                                           city = "Mumbai", country = "IN" };

  I.personAddress = personAddres;

  I.technologies= new string[]{".Net","SQL","SharePoint"};

 

 

  // Entity to string

  Console.WriteLine("Entity:" + Environment.NewLine + I);

  Console.ReadLine();

Output to the console

 

Serialization and Deserialization

Now to serialize and deserialize the CLR and JSON, a class JavaScriptSerializer needs to be initiated and its instance method will be used to do so, as listed below:

• public string Serialize(Object obj)
  
  Converts an object to a JSON string.
   

• public T Deserialize<T>(string input)
  
  Converts the specified JSON string to an object of type T.
   

    JavaScriptSerializer jsSerializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();

    string serializedPerson = jsSerializer.Serialize(I);

   

     // Serialized entity string 

     Console.WriteLine("Entity to JSON:" + Environment.NewLine + serializedPerson);

  
  
   

     // Deserialized entity back to CLR object

     Person Same = jsSerializer.Deserialize<Person>(serializedPerson);

   

     Console.WriteLine("Back to Entity:" + Environment.NewLine + Same);
  
  
  

Summary

In this article, I discussed how to serialize and deserialize a CLR object to and from JSON using C# with an example. Instead of using any third party DLLs for this purpose, we can have the native .Net capabilities available to us.