Simple serialize of encoding

My problem was the serialize of the Encoding . Let’s suppose that we have a class that have a property Encoding( maybe to read a file ).

internal class MyTest
{
    public MyTest()
    {
        enc = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII;
    }
    public Encoding enc { get; set; }
}

We want to serialize this class in order to let the administrator/people to decide what will be the encoding.

When we serialize( obvious,with NewtonSoftJson),we obtain this kind of data:

{
“enc”: {
“IsSingleByte”: true,
“BodyName”: “us-ascii”,
“EncodingName”: “US-ASCII”,
“HeaderName”: “us-ascii”,
“WebName“: “us-ascii”,
“WindowsCodePage”: 1252,
“IsBrowserDisplay”: false,
“IsBrowserSave”: false,
“IsMailNewsDisplay”: true,
“IsMailNewsSave”: true,
“EncoderFallback”: {
“DefaultString”: “?”,
“MaxCharCount”: 1
},
“DecoderFallback”: {
“DefaultString”: “?”,
“MaxCharCount”: 1
},
“IsReadOnly”: true,
“CodePage”: 20127
}
}

This is too much for someone to edit . We want a simple string that can be edited easy – and the WebName,  that is,in fact,a string from https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets/character-sets.xhtml seems the obvious choice.

So –  I have done a JSONConverter class just for this property. It is very simple:

public class JsonEncodingConverter : JsonConverter
{
    public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType)
    {
        return (typeof(Encoding).IsAssignableFrom(objectType));
    }

    public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader,Type objectType,object existingValue,JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
        string webName = "";
        if (reader.TokenType == JsonToken.String)
        {

            webName = reader.Value?.ToString();
        }
        existingValue = Encoding.GetEncoding(webName);

        return existingValue;
    }

    public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer,object value,JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
        string webName = (value as Encoding).WebName;
        serializer.Serialize(writer,webName);
    }
}

And can be used very easy:

MyTest m = new MyTest();
JsonEncodingConverter[] conv = new[] { new JsonEncodingConverter() };
string original = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(m,Formatting.Indented);
string data = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(m,Formatting.Indented,conv);
//https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets/character-sets.xhtml
Console.WriteLine(data);
Console.WriteLine("and now the original");
Console.WriteLine(original);
MyTest s = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MyTest>(data,conv);
Console.WriteLine(s.enc.WebName);

The result of serializing it is now

{
“enc”: “us-ascii”
}

And because it has this code

public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType)
{
    return (typeof(Encoding).IsAssignableFrom(objectType));
}

it means it will serialize just the encoding,not other tools.

And it is more easy to be edited by someone.

Moral: Aim for simple string that can be edited can be achieved when serializing. Do not stay with defaults!

( you can easy achieve backwards compatibility for already serialized Encoding by asking

if (reader.TokenType == JsonToken.StartObject)
{
    webName = reader.Value?.ToString();
    //handling old data format for encoding
    while (reader.TokenType != JsonToken.EndObject)
    {
        if (!reader.Read())
            break;
        if (reader.TokenType != JsonToken.PropertyName)
            continue;
        var val = reader.Value?.ToString();
        if (string.Compare("webname",val,StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) == 0)
        {
            webName = reader.ReadAsString();
            //do not break - advance reading to the end
            //break;
        }
    }

}

)