Custom Behavior won't register in my web.config

Question

I have a working application using Json.NET (newtonsoft) as a custom serializer. Currently I\'m adding this derivative of WebHttpBehavior in a custom WebServiceHostFactory.

Answer 1

The missing piece is the class BehaviorExtensionElement. In the OP I was attempting to add the WebHttpBehavior-derivative as an element. The BehaviorExtensionElement tells the config-parser which Type to use for a certain element.

Here's the implementation I needed:

public class NewtonsoftJsonBehaviorExtension : BehaviorExtensionElement
{
    public override Type BehaviorType
    {
        get { return typeof(NewtonsoftJsonBehavior); }
    }

    protected override object CreateBehavior()
    {
        return new NewtonsoftJsonBehavior();
    }
}

This wasn't sufficient to get rid of my custom WebServiceHostFactory, of course. For I also had to add a custom ContentTypeMapper:

public class NewtonsoftJsonContentTypeMapper : WebContentTypeMapper
{
    public override WebContentFormat GetMessageFormatForContentType(string contentType)
    {
        return WebContentFormat.Raw;
    }
}

I could then use them in my Web.config. Here are the relevant parts of the working config. Firstly setting up the extension and configuring a behavior with it:

Then configuring a webHttpBinding with my custom contentTypeMapper:

Finally setting up an endpoint utilizing the above:

Hope this stuff will help somebody out there. :)