Serialize as object using json.net

Question

I want certain properties to be serialized as 'objects' and not strings. E.g.

{"onClickHandler": OnClickHandler, "onMouseOut": OnMouseOutHandler}

The class def is like this:

public class handlers {

    public string OnClickHandler;
    public string OnMouseOutHandler;

}

Currently it comes out as:

handlers: {"onClickHandler": "OnClickHandler", "onMouseOut": "OnMouseOutHandler"}

As you can guess, these are client side event handlers and correspond to javascript functions defined elsewhere. By emitting them within quotes, they are not interpreted as functions but as literal strings.

Edit:

Taking a cue out of Dave's answer, figured out a way:

first a little bit of scrubbing:

for (var handler in this.handlers) {
   if(window[this.handlers[handler]])
        this.handlers[handler] = window[this.handlers[handler]];
};

and then call jQuery bind normally

 $elem.bind(this.handlers);

Accepting Dave's answer as that is closest.

developmentalinsanity · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-20 22:13:53Z

2

JSON does not support representing functions. JSON consists of arrays of values, and objects (containing variables). Values in JSON can only be strings, numbers, objects or arrays (see the linked page for nice grammar diagram).

What you're after is javascript code, not a JSON object. If you're wanting to emit a reference to a function defined elsewhere, you may have to (shudder) use eval to execute it.

answered Dec 20, 2010 at 22:13

developmentalinsanity

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3 Comments

Mrchief Over a year ago

:) try it! works like a charm! I've my own class that can do this, it's just that I prefer using json.net. Here's the snippet that will give me the json I'm looking for: foreach (var item in collection) { StringBuilder.AppendFormat("\"{0}\":{1},", item.Key, item.Value); }

developmentalinsanity Over a year ago

You may be able to generate something which does it, but it is not JSON. It happens to work, but it doesn't conform to the JSON spec, hence, json.net not doing it.

Mrchief Over a year ago

I agree with you on it not being compliant with the spec but I can live with that in this case. See my comment below to @Dave's answer as to what's acceptable here to me. I'd prefer to have a better solution so if you have one, please propose.

Dave Ward · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-21 00:44:26Z

1

As someone else mentioned, that wouldn't be valid JSON anyway (which precludes you from using JSON.parse(), among other potential drawbacks).

If your event handler functions are defined in the global window scope, you could call them like this:

// This is equivalent to defining window.clickEventHandler or
//  window['clickEventHandler'] as a function variable.
function clickEventHander() {
  // Magic.
}

// Valid JSON, using strings to reference the handler's name.
var json = '{"onClickHandler": "clickEventHandler"}'

// You might be using eval() or a framework for this currently.
var handlerMappings = JSON.parse(json);

window[handlerMappings.onClickHandler]();

answered Dec 21, 2010 at 0:44

Dave Ward

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3 Comments

Mrchief Over a year ago

I'm using jQuery bind to hookup the handlers. I don't want to use eval as that would introduce security considerations. I can live with JSOn.parse failing or this being non JSON compliant. Or is there a better way?

Dave Ward Over a year ago

window[string] is not eval(). Try it with "alert('evil')" as the string value, for example. Speaking of eval(), if you're successfully using manually-built, invalid JSON with unquoted values, that is almost certainly being deserialized via eval() since JSON.parse will not accept it.

Mrchief Over a year ago

alright! figured a way out to keep it JSON compliant and make it work with jQuery bind. see my edits above.

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