How do I translate complex objects in ServiceStack?

Question

Suppose I have two objects:

class Order
{
    string Name {get; set;}
    Customer Customer {get; set;}
    Item[] Items {get; set;}
}

and

Answer 1

You are going to have to handle complex mapping explicitly yourself. Here are some unit tests from ServiceStack src that show how complex types are currently handled.

You can see that the the Car object is serialized into JSON.

var user = new User() {
    FirstName = "Demis",
    LastName = "Bellot",
    Car = new Car() { Name = "BMW X6", Age = 3 }
};

var userDto = user.TranslateTo();

Assert.That(userDto.FirstName, Is.EqualTo(user.FirstName));
Assert.That(userDto.LastName, Is.EqualTo(user.LastName));
Assert.That(userDto.Car, Is.EqualTo("{Name:BMW X6,Age:3}"));

I agree with Trust Me - I'm a Doctor that Automapper is worth using. The built in Translating was designed to reduce dependencies.