JSON.NET cast error when serializing Mongo ObjectId

Question

I am playing around with MongoDB and have an object with a mongodb ObjectId on it. When I serialise this with the .NET Json() method, all is good (but the dates are horrible

Answer 1

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;
    }


}