How to configure ServiceStack.Text to use EnumMember when deserializing?

Question

I am using ServiceStack.Text to deserialize json received in rest api calls to objects C#. The model classes I use have defined the string representation using EnumMember attributes. The problem is that ServiceStack.Text does not seem to use those values. ServiceStack.Text documentation has a section called Custom enum serialization that discusses EnumMember attribute, but it talks only about serialization with no mention of deserialization.

It is possible to configure ServiceStack.Text to use EnumMember when deserializing enums?

The following is an example of the situation:

namespace TestNameSpace
{
    using System;
    using System.Runtime.Serialization;

    class TestClass
    {
        enum TestEnum
        {
            [EnumMember(Value = "default_value")]
            DefaultValue = 0,

            [EnumMember(Value = "real_value")]
            RealValue = 1
        }

        class TestEnumWrapper
        {
            public TestEnum EnumProperty { get; set; }

            public override string ToString()
            {
                return $"EnumProperty: {EnumProperty}";
            }
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string json = @"{ ""enumProperty"": ""real_value"" }";

            TestEnumWrapper deserialized =
                ServiceStack.Text.JsonSerializer.DeserializeFromString<TestEnumWrapper>(json);

            Console.WriteLine($"Deserialized: {deserialized}");
           // Prints: "Deserialized: EnumProperty: DefaultValue"
           // Expected: "Deserialized: EnumProperty: RealValue"
        }
    }
}

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 16 '18 at 14:16

I found out why my deserialization was not working. ServiceStack.Text was not interpreting the EnumMember attributes because enum declaration does not have DataContract attribute set. This is actually explained in the EnumMember documentation link I also linked in the question:

One way to use enumeration types in the data contract model is to apply the DataContractAttribute attribute to the type. You must then apply the EnumMemberAttribute attribute to each member that must be included in the data contract.

Expected results were produced by adding the missing attribute:

[DataContract] // This was missing
enum TestEnum
{ 
    // ...
}

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 15 '18 at 08:42

0

Support for [EnumMember] was only added during this release so you'll need to upgrade to v5.1.1 pre-release NuGet packages on MyGet.

answered Aug 15 '18 at 08:42

mythz

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1

Thank you for your answer! While you are correct in that v5.1.1 prerelease works, it turned out that the version I had (5.1.0) also already included this feature. My problem was actually that I did not have DataContract attribute set for the enum definition. – Otto Urpelainen Aug 16 '18 at 14:11

How to configure ServiceStack.Text to use EnumMember when deserializing?

2 Answers2

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