WCF RESTful web service with JSON.Net: avoid double serialization

Question

Long time lurcher, first time poster here. I\'ve been grappling with this problem for a few days now and would appreciate any tips. I break down the issue here below.

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Answer 1

As I understand you are creating service from scratch and there are no limitations on how REST service will be implemented. Then I suggest you to use ASP.NET WebApi

http://www.asp.net/web-api

Do not use legacy web services technologies because in newers a lot of boilerplate code is already done for you.

With web api you can easily replace or add any serializer/formatter. How to do it is described in following articles:

http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/formats-and-model-binding/media-formatters

http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/formats-and-model-binding/json-and-xml-serialization

I've experienced problems with serialization that you've described and solved them with this approach. From my experience on older web services technologies ( WCF 3.5 Rest Starter Kit, Wcf 4 REST) it could be done in much harder way.