Custom serializer doesn't run

[sakopov]

    public sealed class CustomJsonSerializer : JsonSerializer
    {
        public CustomJsonSerializer()
        {
            ContractResolver = new CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver();
            NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore;
            DefaultValueHandling = DefaultValueHandling.Ignore;
        }
    }

    public class CustomApiBootstrapper : DefaultNancyBootstrapper
    {
        protected override void ConfigureRequestContainer(TinyIoCContainer container, NancyContext context)
        {
            base.ConfigureRequestContainer(container, context);

            container.Register<JsonSerializer, CustomJsonSerializer>();
        }
    }

The CustomJsonSerializer constructor never executes. The JSON response still has null properties.

{
  "data": {
    "application": "myApp",
    "version": "1.0",
    "links": {
      "self": {
        "href": "/api"
      }
    }
  },
  "message": null,
  "status": "success"
}

What's missing?

[thecodejunkie]

Nancy consumes 'ISerializer' instances. You need to implement that in order for Nancy to discover and use it

[sakopov]

That breaks it even more.

Added to bootstrap.

container.Register<ISerializer, JsonNetSerializer>();
container.Register<JsonSerializer, CustomJsonSerializer>();

The JSON looks like:

{
  "Data": {
    "Application": "myApp",
    "Version": "1.0",
    "Links": {
      "self": {
        "Href": "/api"
      }
    }
  },
  "Message": null,
  "Status": "success"
}

Lost camel casing, null values are not ignored.

Also noticed that JSON.Net version that's referenced by Nancy.Serialization.JsonNet is very, very old.

[sakopov]

It seems like i'm having problems with everything that Nancy is supposed to magically pick up and run. (i.e. I'm using FluentValidation with Nancy which also had the same problem until i explicitly added it to dependency registration). So this makes me wonder if the problem is in how i'm running Nancy? I'm using Topshelf and Nancy.Hosting.Self to host it in a windows service.

Update 1
Tried this package on another Nancy API project hosted using OWIN. As soon as i introduced a custom serializer with settings as show in previous post, I noticed that Nancy stopped applying default serialization rules but it also never applied mine. I also never had to explicitly add any registration to see this behavior when running on OWIN. So different hosting types definitely have a profound effect. Second day wasted on this and I feel completely stumped.

Update 2
Oh God, I was adding registrations by overriding the ConfigureRequestContainer instead of ConfigureApplicationContainer.

protected override void ConfigureApplicationContainer(TinyIoCContainer container)
        {
            base.ConfigureApplicationContainer(container);

            container.Register<ISerializer, JsonNetSerializer>();
            container.Register<IBodyDeserializer, JsonNetBodyDeserializer>();
            container.Register<JsonSerializer, CustomJsonSerializer>();
        }

This is working! Rookie mistake. Sorry I'm new to Nancy :(

[ryanulit]

@sakopov that registration is literally the ONLY way it will work for me using the Nancy.Bootstrappers.Autofac bootstrapper on a 64 bit windows machine. Thank you.

[YuriGal]

@ryanulit I know it's been a while but could you please show an example
how custom JsonSerializer is configured in Nancy.Bootstrappers.Autofac bootstrapper ?

[ryanulit]

@YuriGal here's what worked for me, but this is 2+ years old so there may be a better way now:

public class ApiBootstrapper : AutofacNancyBootstrapper
{
    protected override void ConfigureApplicationContainer(ILifetimeScope existingContainer)
    {
        base.ConfigureApplicationContainer(existingContainer);

        existingContainer.Update(builder =>
        {
            builder.RegisterType<JsonNetSerializer>().As<ISerializer>();
            builder.RegisterType<JsonNetBodyDeserializer>().As<IBodyDeserializer>();
            builder.RegisterType<CustomJsonSerializer>().As<JsonSerializer>();
        });
    }
}

And the CustomJsonSerializer class:

public class CustomJsonSerializer : JsonSerializer
{
    public CustomJsonSerializer()
    {
        ContractResolver = new CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver();
        NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore;
        Converters.Add(new StringEnumConverter(true));
    }
}

And here's my packages.config for version references:

<package id="Nancy" version="1.4.5" targetFramework="net471" />
<package id="Nancy.Bootstrappers.Autofac" version="1.4.1" targetFramework="net471" />
<package id="Nancy.Serialization.JsonNet" version="1.4.1" targetFramework="net471" />
<package id="Newtonsoft.Json" version="12.0.2" targetFramework="net471" />

[YuriGal]

@ryanulit Thank you so much for the prompt response! I figured it as far as builder.RegisterType( ) but was missing the .As( ) part. Thanks again!