How to serialize a JSON stringified model to an ASP.NET MVC3 model

Question

I have the following snippets in my MVC 3 website.

Model:

public class Item1
{
    [Display(Name = "Family name")]
    public string FamilyName { get; set; }

    [Display(Name = "Given name")]
    public string GivenName { get; set; }
}

Controller method:

public string SaveAsIs(string form_section11)
{
    //  method 1 works
    var viewModel = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<IDictionary<string, object>>(form_section11);

    //  method 2 gives empty viewModel2
    var viewModel2 = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Item1>(form_section11);

    //  method 3 gives empty item1
    Mapper.CreateMap<IDictionary<string, object>, Item1>();
    Item1 item1 = Mapper.Map<IDictionary<string, object>, Item1>(viewModel);

}

And the value I am posting back is a JSON.stringified structure representing my model. The string (laid out for readability) appears as:

"{
\"item1.FamilyName\":\"Smith\",
\"item1.GivenName\":\"Jane\"
}"

What I want to do is to convert the stringified JSON to my model but cannot see how to do beyond the two attempts above or write my own serializer :-(

Everything else works fine. Anyone got any other ideas. Thanks.

UPDATE 1

Thanks to Darin I have a partial solution which is to remove item1. before using JavaScriptSerializer as above. The strange thing is that item1. is added by Razor, MVC 3 etc when using a strongly typed model. Anyway I now have a solution - thanks.

UPDATE 2

In answer to Darin's question below, Item1 is one entity in my model. The model looks like:

public class ItemModel
{
    public Item1 item1 {get; set;}
    public Item2 item2 {get; set;}
}

The view uses @model ItemModel with the field as @Html.EditorFor(m => m.item1.FamilyName). The two entities are in different forms on the same screen and I am returning them as

 var form_section1Data = JSON.stringify($("#form_section1").formParams()); //item1
 var form_section1Data = JSON.stringify($("#form_section1").formParams()); //item2

and the Ajax call contains:

data: JSON.stringify({ 
    form_section1: form_section1Data,
    form_section2: form_section2Data
}),

I simplified the initial question (trying to be helpful :-))

@SanjaMelnichuk Thanks Sanja, unfortunately I can convert to dictionary easily. It's dictionart to model I can't do. — Peter Smith
– Peter Smith, Commented Oct 20, 2012 at 16:26

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:12:26Z

It is not common to have . in property names. Let's suppose for example thta you have the following javascript object:

var item = { familyName: 'Smith', givenName: 'Jane' };

and the following controller action:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult SaveAsIs(Item1 model)
{
    ...
}

Now it's pretty easy to send an AJAX request:

$.ajax({
    url: '@Url.Action("SaveAsIs")',
    type: 'POST',
    contentType: 'application/json;charset=utf-8',
    data: JSON.stringify(item),
    success: function (result) {

    }
});

This will send the following payload in the POST request body:

{"familyName":"Smith","givenName":"Jane"}

As you can see there are no dots in the property names. They are problematic because the default JavaScriptSerializer that is used by ASP.NET MVC to deserialize JSON requests cannot be easily configured to use different property names for the model. And as you know, you cannot have a dot in the property name of a .NET object.

On the other hand if you absolutely need to have this JSON payload containing dots in the property names you could write a custom value provider factory using JSON.NET which allows you to decorate your view model properties with custom attributes that could override their names.

Thanks for the solution - see UPDATE above for futher comments.
In your UPDATE you mention that the item1. is added by Razor. Could you please show how are you calling the controller action? Why are you using JSON.stringify and on what js object are you calling it? I suspect that there's a much easier solution to the problem. You should not manually be using the JavaScriptSerializer class. This way you are mixing responsibilities in your action.
The original question was a simplification of a more complex program. I have extended this in Update 2 to give more details of what I am doing. Thanks

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