Serialize object to JSON that already contains one JSON property

Question

In order to increase performance, I have cached the result of a larger operation as JSON in a table - together with a key column to determine which row(s) to return. So the

Answer 1

Assuming you have a structure like this for serializing:

public class Record
{
    [JsonProperty("id")]
    public int Id
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    [JsonProperty("json")]
    [JsonConverter(typeof(SpecialJsonConverter))]
    public string Json
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
}

And you use code like this for serialization:

    var data = new []
    { 
        new Record() { Id=1, Json = "{\"property\":\"data\"}" }, 
        new Record() { Id=2, Json = "{\"property\":\"data2\", \"property2\":[1, 2, 3]}" }
    };

    var serialized = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(data);
    Console.WriteLine(serialized);

All you need is to write a proper converter for the Json property. Luckily there is a method WriteToken in the JsonWriter class that could serve our needs:

public sealed class SpecialJsonConverter : JsonConverter
{
    public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType)
    {
        return true;
    }

    public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, object existingValue, JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer, object value, JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
        var reader = new JsonTextReader(new StringReader(value.ToString()));
        writer.WriteToken(reader);
    }
}