Automapper, Dynamics CRM and excluding fields - Part 2

In my previous post, Automapper, Dynamics CRM and excluding fields, I introduced a concept of an "Excludable property". This is just 1 side of the call - POSTing/PUTtting records using a REST API. What about a GET? If you are using something like excludables you'll notice that the JSON returned does not look like the proposed JSON you POST or PUT. In fact, it looks something like this:

{
    Id:
    {
        Include: true,
        Value: "aef7b4c1-98f6-4f53-9be3-2fa72d1e319d"
    },
    Name:
    {
        Include: true,
        Value: "Hello"
    },
    Address1_Line1:
    {
        Include: true,
        Value: "Home!"
    }
}

Which is how our Excludables map to JSON. Here do we stop this?

Extend the IExcludable interface

To convert our excludables correctly we need to intercept the conversion and handle these properties manually. The first problem we hit is although we know it's an Excludable<> we don't know what the raw type is. The best way around this is to expand the IExcludable interface to allow exposing of a raw value, like this:

    public interface IExcludable

    {

        bool Include { get; set; }

        object RawValue { get; set; }

    }

The Excludable<> class just implements it on top of the existing value field, like this:

        public object RawValue

        {

            get

            {

                return value;

            }

            set { this.value = (T) value; }

        }

View Model Json Converter

Now that we can find the raw value without needing to know the underlying generic type we can intercept any excludable and convert it. This is the full converter class that results:

public class ViewModelJsonConverter : JsonConverter

    {

        public override bool CanRead => false;

        public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer, object value, JsonSerializer serializer)

        {

            JObject o = JObject.Parse(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(value, Formatting.Indented,

                new JsonSerializerSettings {ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore}));

            foreach (var propertyInfo in value.GetType().GetProperties())

            {

                if (propertyInfo.CanRead)

                {

                    var currentValue = propertyInfo.GetValue(value);

                    IExcludable excludable = currentValue as IExcludable;

                    if (excludable != null)

                    {

                        if (excludable.Include)

                        {

                            if (excludable.RawValue == null || excludable.RawValue.GetType().IsValueType || excludable.RawValue.GetType().Name == "String")

                            {

                                o.Property(propertyInfo.Name).Value = new JValue(excludable.RawValue);

                            }

                            else

                            {

                                o.Property(propertyInfo.Name).Value = JObject.FromObject(excludable.RawValue);

                            }

                        }

                        else

                        {

                            o.Remove(propertyInfo.Name);

                        }

                    }

                }

            }

            o.WriteTo(writer);

        }

        public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType)

        {

            if (objectType.BaseType == typeof (ViewModel))

            {

                return true;

            }

            return false;

        }

        public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, object existingValue, JsonSerializer serializer)

        {

            throw new System.NotImplementedException();

        }

    }

In the above code our view models code had inherited a ViewModel class. Also worth pointing out is how you handle the both value and object types (with strings needing an extra helping hand as they're a bit different!). For value types and strings you need to create a JValue where as for reference types you need to expose them as a JObject.

Now, just add this converter like so in your global.asax exactly how you added your excludable converter from the previous post:

GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.AddJsonConverter(new ViewModelJsonConverter());

This code effectively flattens the excludable class into the generic types and outside of the world of your REST api nobody is any the wiser.