Using JSON.NET to serialize object into HttpClient's response stream

Question

Abstract

Hi, I\'m working on a project where it is needed to send potentially huge json of some object via HttpClient, a 10-20 mb of JSON is a typical size. In orde

Answer 1

If you define a subclass of HttpContent :

public class JsonContent:HttpContent
{
    public object SerializationTarget{get;private set;}
    public JsonContent(object serializationTarget)
    {
        SerializationTarget=serializationTarget;
        this.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json");
    }
    protected override async Task SerializeToStreamAsync(Stream stream, 
                                                TransportContext context)
    {
        using(StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(stream))
        using(JsonTextWriter jsonWriter = new JsonTextWriter(writer))
        {
            JsonSerializer ser = new JsonSerializer();
            ser.Serialize(jsonWriter, SerializationTarget );
        }

    }   

    protected override bool TryComputeLength(out long length)
    {
        //we don't know. can't be computed up-front
        length = -1;
        return false;
    }
}

then you can:

var someObj = new {a = 1, b = 2};
var client = new HttpClient();
var content = new JsonContent(someObj);
var responseMsg = await client.PostAsync("http://someurl",content);

and the serializer will write directly to the request stream.