How to do Conditional Serialization using C# - NewtonSoft.Json

Question

I am doing json serialization using NewtonSoft.Json

public class CommonBase
{
    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "u_customer_id")]
    public long CustomerId { get; set; }
}

I want to do a conditional serialization so that if CustomerId value is 0, I want to set a blank value for CustomerId during json serialization. Since CommonBase is a base class and I am not able to change data type from long to string.

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

You almost have the answer in your question title. What you are looking for is Conditional Property Serialization

You just need to add method named like this: ShouldSerialize + PropertyName. In your case method should look like:

public bool ShouldSerializeCustomerId()
{
   return SomeCondition;
}

P.s. if you are creating base class, you probably want to have abstract class.

Answer 2

I have solved this issue by changing CustomerId property as nullable.

   public long? CustomerId { get; set; }