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I would like to understand how to proceed with creation of REST based WCF service and entity data model using JSON response. I have followed the instructions listed in :

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/105273/Create-RESTful-WCF-Service-API-Step-By-Step-Guide

This is the namespace DeviceManagementService_Rest in the IService1.cs file:

Here. deviceOS is the parameter used to list down different devices running a particular OS.

[ServiceContract]
    public interface IService1
    {
        [OperationContract]
        [WebInvoke(Method = "GET",
                   ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json, UriTemplate = "json/{deviceOS}", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Bare)]

        string JSONData(string deviceOS);
    }

This class is created to query the data and convert into JSON format: 

public class Service1 : IService1
    {
        DeviceManEntities dme;
        public string JSONData(string deviceOS)
        {
            dme = new DeviceManEntities();
            var result = (from m in dme.DeviceInfoes
                          select new
                          {
                              Name = m.deviceName,
                              OS = m.deviceOS,
                              UID = m.deviceUID
                          }).ToList();

            var serializer = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();
            return serializer.Serialize(result);

        }
    }

The problem being: I get the response in this format:

"[{\"Name\":\"Galaxy S3\",\"OS\":\"Andriod\",\"UID\":\"101\"},
{\"Name\":\"iPhone 5-D1\",\"OS\":\"iOS\",\"UID\":\"123\"}]"

Where as, ideally I would have expected it to be like this:

"[{"Name":"Galaxy S3","OS":"Android","UID":"101"}
{"Name":"iPhone 5-D1","OS":"iOS","UID":"123"}]"
  1. How can I remove those "\"s
  2. Is the implementation of serialization correct ? if no, is there a better way ?
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1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You don´t need to serialize the response into a Json yourself. Leave that to WCF, which will do as you have set [WebInboke] attribute with the Json response format by setting ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json

Just define the service contract so it returns a .net object, and WCF will take care of the serialization for you. Following with your example, create a class for the devices and return a list (or an array if you prefer so) of devices in the service operation:

public class Device
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string OS { get; set; }
    public int UID { get; set; }
}

[ServiceContract]
public interface IService1
{
    [OperationContract]
    [WebInvoke(Method = "GET",
               ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json, 
               UriTemplate = "json/{deviceOS}", 
               BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Bare)]
    List<Device> JSONData(string deviceOS);
}

public class Service1 : IService1
{
    DeviceManEntities dme;
    public List<Device> JSONData(string deviceOS)
    {
        dme = new DeviceManEntities();
        return (from m in dme.DeviceInfoes
                      select new Device
                      {
                          Name = m.deviceName,
                          OS = m.deviceOS,
                          UID = m.deviceUID
                      }).ToList();

    }
}

You have some other similar tutorials that shows this here and here

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Thanks for your help @Daniel , it works ! – darthy734 14 hours ago

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