How to omit empty collections when serializing with Json.NET
If you're looking for a solution which can be used generically across different types and does not require any modification (attributes, etc), then the best solution that I can think if would be a custom DefaultContractResolver
class. It would use reflection to determine if any IEnumerable
s for a given type are empty.
public class IgnoreEmptyEnumerablesResolver : DefaultContractResolver
{
public static readonly IgnoreEmptyEnumerablesResolver Instance = new IgnoreEmptyEnumerablesResolver();
protected override JsonProperty CreateProperty(MemberInfo member, MemberSerialization memberSerialization)
{
var property = base.CreateProperty(member, memberSerialization);
if (property.PropertyType != typeof(string) &&
typeof(IEnumerable).IsAssignableFrom(property.PropertyType))
{
property.ShouldSerialize = instance =>
{
IEnumerable enumerable = null;
// this value could be in a public field or public property
switch (member.MemberType)
{
case MemberTypes.Property:
enumerable = instance
.GetType()
.GetProperty(member.Name)
.GetValue(instance, null) as IEnumerable;
break;
case MemberTypes.Field:
enumerable = instance
.GetType()
.GetField(member.Name)
.GetValue(instance) as IEnumerable;
break;
default:
break;
}
if (enumerable != null)
{
// check to see if there is at least one item in the Enumerable
return enumerable.GetEnumerator().MoveNext();
}
else
{
// if the list is null, we defer the decision to NullValueHandling
return true;
}
};
}
return property;
}
}