Newtonsoft.Json serialization returns empty json object

Question

I have list of objects of following class:

public class Catagory
{
    int catagoryId;
    string catagoryNameHindi;
    string catagoryNameEnglish;
    List         


        

Answer 1

Another cause of this problem--the class I was attempting to serialize derived from a base class that had the [DataContract] attribute, but the derived class lacked this attribute. Once I added [DataContract] to the derived class and [DataMember] to all of the public properties of the derived class it began working immediately.

Answer 2

By default, NewtonSoft.Json will only serialize public members, so make your fields public:

public class Catagory
{
    public int catagoryId;
    public string catagoryNameHindi;
    public string catagoryNameEnglish;
    public List<Object> subCatagories;

    public Catagory(int Id, string NameHindi, string NameEng, List<Object> l)
    {
        this.catagoryId = Id;
        this.catagoryNameHindi = NameHindi;
        this.catagoryNameEnglish = NameEng;
        this.subCatagories = l;
    }
}

Edit: If for some reason you really don't want to make your fields public, you can instead decorate them with the JsonPropertyAttribute to allow them to be serialized and deserialized:

[JsonProperty]
int catagoryId;

Answer 3

You could also decorate your class to serialize all members you want without having to specify [JsonProperty] for each of them.

[JsonObject(MemberSerialization.OptOut)]
public class Catagory {
    ...
}

The MemberSerialization enum allows you to specify what members you want to serialize:

• MemberSerialization.OptOut: All public members are serialized.
• MemberSerialization.OptIn: Only members marked with JsonPropertyAttribute or DataMemberAttribute are serialized.
• MemberSerialization.Fields: All public and private members are serialized.

Answer 4

A different problem in my case, It appears if you mark a class as [DataContract] then the properties to be serialized need to be marked [DataMember] and also should be Public.

In my case, I was migrating from WCF to web API , so didnt require any of DataContract or DataMember, so I removed all and it got serialised fine.