JSON.NET cast error when serializing Mongo ObjectId

You can use .NET string type instead of ObjectId, You just need to decorate it with BsonRepresentation. If you use BsonDateTime, you will have the same conversion issue. This is a domain class in my project that uses those decorators.

public class DocumentMetadata
{
    [BsonId]
    [BsonRepresentation(BsonType.ObjectId)]
    public string Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string FullName { get; set; }

    [BsonDateTimeOptions(Kind = DateTimeKind.Utc)]
    public DateTime DownloadTime { get; set; }
}

I resolved a similar problem I was experiencing with the JSON.NET serializer/InvalidCastException error by setting the JsonOutputMode to strict, which eradicated the need to change the underlying type:

var jsonWriterSettings = new JsonWriterSettings { OutputMode = JsonOutputMode.Strict };
var json = doc.ToJson(jsonWriterSettings);

With further information available in the API: http://api.mongodb.org/csharp/1.8.3/html/d73bf108-d68c-e472-81af-36ac29ea08da.htm

1) Write ObjectId converter

public class ObjectIdConverter : JsonConverter
{
    public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType)
    {
        return objectType == typeof(ObjectId);
    }

    public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, object existingValue, JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
        if (reader.TokenType != JsonToken.String)
            throw new Exception($"Unexpected token parsing ObjectId. Expected String, got {reader.TokenType}.");

        var value = (string)reader.Value;
        return string.IsNullOrEmpty(value) ? ObjectId.Empty : new ObjectId(value);
    }

    public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer, object value, JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
        if (value is ObjectId)
        {
            var objectId = (ObjectId)value;
            writer.WriteValue(objectId != ObjectId.Empty ? objectId.ToString() : string.Empty);
        }
        else
        {
            throw new Exception("Expected ObjectId value.");
        }
    }
}

2) Register it in JSON.NET globally with global settings and you not need mark you models with big attributes

            var _serializerSettings = new JsonSerializerSettings()
            {
                Converters = new List<JsonConverter> { new ObjectIdConverter() }
            };

3) Big advice - don't use ObjectId in your models - use string

[BsonRepresentation(BsonType.ObjectId]
public string Id{ get;set; }

I had a pointer from the MongoDB user group. https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/mongodb-csharp/A_DXHuPscnQ

The response was

This seems to be a Json.NET issue, but not really. There is a custom type here it simply doesn't know about. You need to tell Json.NET how to serialize an ObjectId.

So, I implemented the following solution

I decorated my ObjectId with

[JsonConverter(typeof(ObjectIdConverter))]

Then wrote a custom converter that just spits out the Guid portion of the ObjectId

 class ObjectIdConverter : JsonConverter
{

    public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer, object value, JsonSerializer serializer)
    { 
        serializer.Serialize(writer, value.ToString());
       
    }

    public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, object existingValue, JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType)
    {
        return typeof(ObjectId).IsAssignableFrom(objectType);
        //return true;
    }


}