current community

more stack exchange communities

Stack Exchange
tour help
careers 2.0
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 0 down vote favorite

I am using jQueryUI's autocomplete to allow the search of users. The documentation states that I am able to use an array for the source of the data in the following format: [ { label: "Choice1", value: "value1" }, ... ]

I have a base class that provides a list of unique Users which is inherited by my view-model. The view model has the following function:

public List<TestJson> GetUsers()
{
    return AvailableUsers
        .Select(u => new TestJson
            {
                Label = u.LastName + ", " + u.FirstName + "(" + u.UserId + ")",
                Value = u.UserId
            }).ToList();
}
public class TestJson
{
    public string Label { set; get; }
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

In my view, I use the above like so:

var userNameList = @Html.Raw(Json.Encode(Model.GetUsers()));

    $("#UserName").autocomplete({
        source:userNameList 
    });

Turns out userNameList is showing up like this:

[ { "Label": "Choice1", "Value": "value1" }, ... ]

instead of:

[ { label: "Choice1", value: "value1" }, ... ]

How can I get my array to show in the correct format?

EDIT: Based on input from comments, I have verified that both those formats are indeed functionally equivalent. I did a little more testing and it turns out that label and value are case sensitive. Changing my members to lower case seems to do the trick, but I don't feel that solution is the best. Any suggestions on how to change the string on the left side of the : (what is this called?) to lowercase?

share|improve this question
4  
Either of those outputs should work fine. What's the issue you're having? –  Jason P Sep 23 '13 at 18:37
5  
[ { label: "Choice1", value: "value1" }, ... ] is functionally equivalent to [ { "label": "Choice1", "value": "value1" }, ... ], or are you experiencing a problem? –  Rob G Sep 23 '13 at 18:37
 
@RobG You are right! Please see my edit –  Jeff Sep 23 '13 at 18:51
 
I was hit with the same. Just to get past this, I went with lower-cased properties. You might find an attribute decoration to control the name that's used during serialization but I don't see anything immediately available unless you're using the Newtonsoft library: stackoverflow.com/questions/8796618/… –  Erik Noren Sep 23 '13 at 19:27
 
After a deeper look, it seems MVC uses JavaScriptSerializer which doesn't respect [DataMember] attributes like JSON.NET does. stackoverflow.com/questions/12497124/… so you can either switch to JSON.NET or look at this: stackoverflow.com/questions/1302946/… –  Erik Noren Sep 23 '13 at 19:31
add comment

3 Answers

up vote 0 down vote

A simple Employee object:

public class Employee
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Age { get; set; }
public string ID { get; set; }   
}

Adding some instances of them to a List:

Employee oEmployee1 = 
new Employee{Name="Pini",ID="111", Age="30"};

Employee oEmployee2 = 
new Employee { Name = "Yaniv", ID = "Cohen", Age = "31" };
Employee oEmployee3 = 
new Employee { Name = "Yoni", ID = "Biton", Age = "20" };

List<Employee> oList = new List<Employee>() 
{ oEmployee1, oEmployee2, oEmployee3 };

Serializing then:

System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer oSerializer = 
new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();
string sJSON = oSerializer.Serialize(oList);

And here is the output:

[{"Name":"Pini","Age":"30","ID":"111"},
{"Name":"Yaniv","Age":"31","ID":"Cohen"},
{"Name":"Yoni","Age":"20","ID":"Biton"}]

Also below link has similar example

Convert Object to JSON in MVC 4

share|improve this answer
add comment
up vote 0 down vote

I assume you are using MVC. WebAPI will default to camelCase while MVC defaults to PascalCase.

See also: Proper JSON serialization in MVC 4 and http://www.matskarlsson.se/blog/serialize-net-objects-as-camelcase-json.

share|improve this answer
add comment
up vote 0 down vote accepted

Comments by Jason P and Rob G are correct. The two formats in questions are equivalent. Turns out my issue was with the casing. DOH!

I just changed the properties in my class to be lower case. Thought, I would love to see an alternate solution. I will choose this one until a better one is submitted.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.