I am having difficulty with serialisation. I have an aspx page that uses an ajax call to return objects from the server side.
Desired output
ModelPoints=[[1,2,3],[1,2,3],[1,2,3],[1,2,3],[1,2,3]] (for WebGL)
Actual output ModelPoints={{Points=[1,2,3]},{Points=[1,2,3]},{Points=[1,2,3]},{Points=[1,2,3]}}
The application flow is
Ajax -> Aspx -> WCF -> Aspx -> Ajax
Below are the classes that are being serialized incorrectly. How do i restructure this so that it works? I do not want to parse 18000+ pts more than once, so the output from the server should be the correct format. i.e. I cannot afford to parse it on the client side.
The object name Points comes from the parameter name, how to do this for a 2D array of floats.
The classes below
[Serializable()]
public class ModelPoint
{
public ModelPoint()
{
}
public ModelPoint(float x, float y, float z)
{
_points = new List<Nullable<float>>();
_points.Add(x);
_points.Add(y);
_points.Add(z);
}
private List<Nullable<float>> _points;
public List<Nullable<float>> Points
{
get {return _points;}
set { _points = value; }
}
}
[Serializable()]
public class Model
{
private List<ModelPoint> _modelPoints;
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlArray("ModelPoints", IsNullable = true)]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlArrayItem()]
public List<ModelPoint> ModelPoints
{
get {return _modelPoints;}
set { _modelPoints = value; }
}
}
In json, square brackets [] denote an array and curly brackets {} denote an object. So the data structure represented by your desired output:
[[1,2,3],[1,2,3],[1,2,3],[1,2,3],[1,2,3]]
Is a 2 dimensional array of integers. To obtain that in C#, you could use something like:
List<List<int>> model = new List<List<int>>()
model.Add(new List<int>() {1, 2, 3});
model.Add(new List<int>() {1, 2, 3});
or something like:
int[,] model = new int[5, 3] {{1,2,3},{1,2,3}};
You basically only want a two dimensional array to be produced. Assuming you use the DataContractJsonSerializer on your WCF endpoint your Model class should look like this:
public class Model
{
private float[][] _modelPoints;
public float[][] ModelPoints
{
get { return _modelPoints; }
set { _modelPoints = value; }
}
}
Notice that I removed all the serialization attributes (if you leave them on the serializer magically outputs the backingfield instead of the property) and I have no longer used the ModelPoint class. If I feed that the DataContractJSONSerializer I get your desired output:
var ds = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(Model));
var model = new Model
{
ModelPoints = new[] {
new[] { 1f, 2f, 3f },
new[] { 4f, 5f, 6f } }
};
var sb = string.Empty;
using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
{
ds.WriteObject(ms, model);
sb= Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray());
}
Debug.WriteLine(sb);
gives in the debug console which is similar to what you expect to receive.
{"ModelPoints":[[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]}