Designing Classes With Interface In C# (JSON.NET)

Question

I am in the process of designing an itemization system for a game. I am creating a bunch of interfaces (IItem, IConsumable, IEquipable, IWeapon, etc...) to define what type of functionality is possible with items and then a number of classes (Weapon, Potion, etc...) the define the actual item types.

Now when saving out the player, the data is going to be stored as a JSON file (using the JSON.NET library) and will included the players inventory which will include these items. The issue is that when I try to deserialize the JSON file to an object when reading in the file, how will I be able to tell the JSON.NET library what type of class this is?

One thing I thought of and have not had time to try yet is that all my objects that get serialized into JSON have a DTO version of the object that is used in conjunction with the JSON.NET library. What I though about trying is maybe I could add in a property to the DTO called ClassType and then when reading the file into the application, I would first read the object in as an anonymous type. Then based on the ClassType property, I would convert it to the proper type. The 2 issues I have with this is that 1. it seems like a very ugly solution and 2. I am not even sure if that is possible.

possible duplicate of Using Json.NET converters to deserialize properties — nawfal
– nawfal, Commented Jul 20, 2014 at 12:04

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:24:40Z

1

(Copied from this question)

In cases here I have not had control over the incoming JSON (and so cannot ensure that it includes a $type property) I have written a custom converter that just allows you to explicitly specify the concrete type:

public class Model
{
    [JsonConverter(typeof(ConcreteTypeConverter<Something>))]
    public ISomething TheThing { get; set; }
}

This just uses the default serializer implementation from Json.Net whilst explicitly specifying the concrete type.

The source code and an overview are available on this blog post.

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:24

CommunityBot

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answered Aug 30, 2012 at 18:09

Steve Greatrex

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Thomas Li · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-21 16:09:16Z

0

You should know the concrete type when you are serializing. So you can use TypeNameHandling of JSON.NET.

http://james.newtonking.com/archive/2010/08/13/json-net-3-5-release-8-3-5-final.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+jamesnewtonking+%28James+Newton-King%29

answered Mar 21, 2011 at 16:09

Thomas Li

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3 Comments

ryanzec Over a year ago

I'll give it a try (hopefully that feature works with the 2.0 version of the library as I have to use that version).

Thomas Li Over a year ago

Just checked. Nope, version 2.0 does not support TypeNameHandling.

ryanzec Over a year ago

Well that sucks, will have to find another way around it I guess.

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