Serialization and deserialization of polymorphic objects with System.Text.Json and .NET 7
Six months ago, I described how to serialize and deserialize polymorphic objects using System.Text.Json in .NET 6. This was a bit complicated in .NET 6. In .NET 7 it has improved significantly and is now quite simple.
Example
As an example, I use the same classes as in the post I wrote for .NET 6. See here for details.
Serialization and Deserialization with .NET 7
In .NET 7, the whole thing has become much, much easier. Details can be found in the Microsoft documentation.
It is sufficient to provide the classes with the appropriate JsonDerivedTypeAttributes:
using System.Text.Json;
using System.Text.Json.Serialization;
using Woopec.Core; // class Vec2D comes from here
[JsonDerivedType(typeof(ScreenObject), typeDiscriminator: "ScreenObject")]
[JsonDerivedType(typeof(ScreenLine), typeDiscriminator: "ScreenLine")]
[JsonDerivedType(typeof(ScreenFigure), typeDiscriminator: "ScreenFigure")]
public class ScreenObject
{
public int ID { get; set; }
}
public class ScreenLine : ScreenObject
{
public Vec2D Point1 { get; set; }
public Vec2D Point2 { get; set; }
}
public class ScreenFigure : ScreenObject
{
public Vec2D Position { get; set; }
public double Heading { get; set; }
public ShapeBase Shape { get; set; }
}
[JsonDerivedType(typeof(PolygonShape), typeDiscriminator: "PolygonShape")]
[JsonDerivedType(typeof(ImageShape), typeDiscriminator: "ImageShape")]
public abstract class ShapeBase
{
public string Name { get; set; }
}
public class PolygonShape : ShapeBase
{
public List<Vec2D> Polygon { get; set; }
}
public class ImageShape : ShapeBase
{
public string Path { get; set; }
}
Because we want to deserialize the classes as well as serialize them, we also had to specify a typeDiscriminator. If the base class is not abstract, the typeDiscriminator must also be specified for the base class (see class ScreenObject). If the class is abstract, you must not specify an JsonDerivedType attribute (see class ShapeBase).
More you do not have to do!
This test will work:
public void TestWithFigure()
{
var figure1 = new ScreenFigure()
{
ID = 1,
Heading = 90,
Position = (1, 2),
Shape = new PolygonShape()
{
Name = "Arrow",
Polygon = new() { (-10, 0), (10, 0), (0, 10) }
}
};
PerformRoundTrip(figure1);
}
private void PerformRoundTrip(ScreenObject screenObject)
{
string serialization = JsonSerializer.Serialize(screenObject);
// serialization contains all attributes of figure1
ScreenObject result = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<ScreenObject>(serialization);
// result is an object of type ScreenFigure and contains all attributes of figure1
}
Conclusion
The improvements in .NET 7 make the technical code you had to write in .NET 6 obsolete (about 100 lines for the example above). It’s super simple now.
Comment on this post ❤️
I am very interested in what readers think of this post and what ideas or questions they have. The easiest way to do this is to respond to my anonymous survey.