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ASP.NET Core 3.1.4 Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: How To Serialize Nonstandard Enum Values?

clock July 21, 2020 13:50 by author Peter

.NET client libraries that integrate with third-party APIs occasionally need to compromise on how enum values are represented in model classes. For example, an API that requires values to be expressed in all uppercase letters force the creation of an enum similar to:

public enum YesNoMaybeEnum  
 {  
     YES,  
     NO,  
     MAYBE   
 }  


While this will compile, it violates .NET naming conventions. In other cases, the third party may include names that include invalid characters like dashes or periods. For example, Amazon's Alexa messages include a list of potential request types that include a period in the names. These values cannot be expressed as enumation names. While this could be addressed by changing the data type of the serialized property from an enumeration to a string, the property values are no longer constrained and any suggestions from Intellisense are lost.

This article demonstrates how to eat your cake and have it, too. Using attributes and reflection, values can be serialized to and deserialized from JSON.

Serialization with EnumDescription
Let's say we need to serialize values that include periods. Creating an enum like the following generates compile time errors,

public enum RequestTypeEnum  
{  
    LaunchRequest,  
    IntentRequest,  
    SessionEndedRequest,  
    CanFulfillIntentRequest,  
    AlexaSkillEvent.SkillPermissionAccepted,  
    AlexaSkillEvent.SkillAccountLinked,  
    AlexaSkillEvent.SkillEnabled,  
    AlexaSkillEvent.SkillDisabled,  
    AlexaSkillEvent.SkillPermissionChanged,  
    Messaging.MessageReceived  
}  

The EnumMember attribute defines the value to serialize when dealing with data contracts. Samples on Stack Overflow that show enumeration serialization tend to use the Description attribute. Either attribute can be used or you can create your own. The EnumMember attribute is more tightly bound to data contract serialization while the Description attribute is for use with design time and runtime environments, the serialization approach in this article opts for the EnumMember. After applying the EnumMember and Data Contract attributes, the enum now looks like,

[DataContract(Name = "RequestType")]    
public enum RequestTypeEnum    
{    
    [EnumMember(Value = "LaunchRequest")]    
    LaunchRequest,    
    [EnumMember(Value = "IntentRequest")]    
    IntentRequest,    
    [EnumMember(Value = "SessionEndedRequest")]    
    SessionEndedRequest,    
    [EnumMember(Value = "CanFulfillIntentRequest")]    
    CanFulfillIntentRequest,    
    [EnumMember(Value = "AlexaSkillEvent.SkillPermissionAccepted")]    
    SkillPermissionAccepted,    
    [EnumMember(Value = "AlexaSkillEvent.SkillAccountLinked")]    
    SkillAccountLinked,    
    [EnumMember(Value = "AlexaSkillEvent.SkillEnabled")]    
    SkillEnabled,    
    [EnumMember(Value = "AlexaSkillEvent.SkillDisabled")]    
    SkillDisabled,    
    [EnumMember(Value = "AlexaSkillEvent.SkillPermissionChanged")]    
    SkillPermissionChanged,    
    [EnumMember(Value = "Messaging.MessageReceived")]    
    MessageReceived    
}    

The EnumMember attribute is also applied to enum members without periods. Otherwise, the DataContractSerilizer would serializes the numeric representation of the enumeration value. Now we can define a DataContract with,
[DataContract]  
public class SamplePoco  
{  
    [DataMember]  
    public RequestTypeEnum RequestType { get; set; }  
}
 

And serialize it to XML with,
SamplePoco enumPoco = new SamplePoco();  
enumPoco.RequestType = RequestTypeEnum.SkillDisabled;  
DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(SamplePoco));  
 
var output = new StringBuilder();  
using (var xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(output))  
{  
    serializer.WriteObject(xmlWriter, enumPoco);  
    xmlWriter.Close();  
}  
string xmlOut = output.ToString();   


This generates the following XML,
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><SamplePoco xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/EnumSerializationSample"><RequestType>AlexaSkillEvent.SkillDisabled</RequestType>  
</SamplePoco>  


DataContract serialization is sorted out, but doesn't yet address JSON serialization.

JSON Serialization

If you need to work with any REST API endpoints, then you'll need to support JSON. The NewtonSoft JSON has its own serialization strategy, and so the EnumMember attribute needs to be leveraged to integrate with it using a custom JsonConverter, but before taking that step, the enumation value must be read from the attribute.

This method accepts an enum value and returns the string value in the EnumMember attribute.
private string GetDescriptionFromEnumValue(Enum value)  
        {  
 
#if NETSTANDARD2_0  
            EnumMemberAttribute attribute = value.GetType()  
                .GetField(value.ToString())  
                .GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumMemberAttribute), false)  
                .SingleOrDefault() as EnumMemberAttribute;  
 
            return attribute == null ? value.ToString() : attribute.Value;  
#endif  
 
#if NETSTANDARD1_6 || NETSTANDARD1_3 || NET45 || NET47  
 
            EnumMemberAttribute attribute = value.GetType()  
                .GetRuntimeField(value.ToString())  
                .GetCustomAttributes(typeof(EnumMemberAttribute), false)  
                .SingleOrDefault() as EnumMemberAttribute;  
 
            return attribute == null ? value.ToString() : attribute.Value;  
            
#endif  
              throw new NotImplementedException("Unsupported version of .NET in use");  
        }  


There's a subtle difference between the .NET Standard 2.0 implementation and the others. In .NET Standard 1.6 and prior versions, use the GetRuntimeField method to get a property from a type. In .NET Standard 2.0, use the GetField method to return the property of a type. The compile-time constants and checks in the GetDescriptionFromEnumValue abstract away that complexity.  

Coming the other way, a method needs to take a string and convert it to the associated enumeration.
public T GetEnumValue(string enumMemberText)   
{  
 
    T retVal = default(T);  
 
    if (Enum.TryParse<T>(enumMemberText, out retVal))  
        return retVal;  
 
      var enumVals = Enum.GetValues(typeof(T)).Cast<T>();  
 
    Dictionary<string, T> enumMemberNameMappings = new Dictionary<string, T>();  
 
    foreach (T enumVal in enumVals)  
    {  
        string enumMember = enumVal.GetDescriptionFromEnumValue();  
        enumMemberNameMappings.Add(enumMember, enumVal);  
    }  
 
    if (enumMemberNameMappings.ContainsKey(enumMemberText))  
    {  
        retVal = enumMemberNameMappings[enumMemberText];  
    }  
    else  
        throw new SerializationException($"Could not resolve value {enumMemberText} in enum {typeof(T).FullName}");  
 
    return retVal;  
}  

The values expressed in the EnumMember attributes are loaded into a dictionary. The value of the attribute serves as the key and the associated enum is the value. The dictionary keys are compared to the string value passed to the parameter and if a matching EnumMember value is found, then the related enum is returned and so "AlexaSkillEvent.Enabled" returns RequestTypeEnum.SkillEnabled.
Using this method in a JSON Converter, the WriteJson method looks like the following,
public class JsonEnumConverter<T> : JsonConverter where T : struct, Enum, IComparable, IConvertible, IFormattable
{  
 
    public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer, object value, JsonSerializer serializer)  
    {  
        if (value != null)  
        {  
            Enum sourceEnum = value as Enum;  
 
            if (sourceEnum != null)    
            {  

                string enumText = GetDescriptionFromEnumValue(sourceEnum);  
                writer.WriteValue(enumText);  
            }  
        }  
    }  


Please note that an enum constraint is applied to the generic type class declaration. This wasn't possible until C# version 7.3. If you cannot upgrade to use C# version 7.3, just remove this constraint.

The corresponding ReadJson method is,
public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, object existingValue, JsonSerializer serializer)  
{  
      object val = reader.Value;  
      if (val != null)  
    {  
        var enumString = (string)reader.Value;  
          return GetEnumValue(enumString);  
    }  
      return null;  
}  


Now the class definition needs to apply the JsonConverter class to the RequestType property,
[DataContract]  
public class SamplePoco  
{  
    [DataMember]  
    [JsonConverter(typeof(JsonEnumConverter<RequestTypeEnum>))]  
    public RequestTypeEnum RequestType { get; set; }  
 
 

Finally, the SamplePoco class is serialized to JSON,
SamplePoco enumPoco = new SamplePoco();  
enumPoco.RequestType = RequestTypeEnum.SkillEnabled;  
string samplePocoText = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(enumPoco);  
This generates the following JSON,
{  
"RequestType":"AlexaSkillEvent.SkillEnabled"  
}  

And deserialing the JSON yields the RequestTypeEnum.SkillEnabled value on the sample class.

string jsonText = "{\"RequestType\":\"AlexaSkillEvent.SkillEnabled\"}";  
SamplePoco sample = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<SamplePoco>(jsonText); 

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ASP.NET Core Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: How .NET Support Multiple Languages?

clock July 6, 2020 13:38 by author Peter

An application is said to be multilingual if it can be deployed in many different languages. With .NET, all of the languages including Visual Basic, .NET, C#, and J# compile to a common Intermediate language (IL). This makes all languages interoperable. Microsoft has created Java bytecode, which is a low-level language with a simple syntax, which can be very quickly translated into native machine code.

CLR
.NET Framework is a multilingual application because of CLR. CLR is the key of .NET Framework. The code running under the control of the CLR is often termed as managed code.

The main task of CLR is to convert compiled code into the native code.
.NET Framework has one or more compilers; for e.g., VB .NET, C#, C++, JScript or any third party compiler such as COBOL. Anyone of these compilers will convert your source code into Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL). The main reason for .NET to be multilingual is that you can compile your code from IL and this compiled code will be interoperable with the code that has been compiled to IL from another language.

It simply means that you can create pages in different languages (like C#, VB .NET, J# etc.) and once all of these pages are compiled they all can be used in a single application. Let us understand this point clearly with an example.

Let us consider a situation where a customer needs an application to be ready in 20 days. For completing the application in 20 days we want 30 developers who all know the specific language but we have 15 developers who know C# and 15 developers who know VB .NET. In this situation, if we don’t use .NET then we need to hire 15 more developers of C# or VB .NET which is a difficult and costly solution. Now, if we use .NET then we can use C# and VB .NET language in the same application. This is possible because once C# code is compiled from IL it becomes interoperable with VB .NET code which is compiled from IL.

Then JIT (Just In Time) of CLR converts this MSIL code into native code using metadata which is then executed by OS.

CLR stands for common language runtime. Common language runtime provides other services like memory management, thread management, remoting, and other security such as CTS and CLS.

CLR is a layer between an operating system and .NET language, which uses CTS and CLS to create code.

CTS
CTS stands for the common type system. CTS defines rules that common language runtime follows when we are declaring, using and managing type. CTS deals with the data type. .NET supports many languages and every language has its own data type. One language cannot understand data types of another language.

For example: When we are creating an application in C#, we have int and when we are creating an application in VB .NET, we have an integer. Here CTS comes into play --  after the compilation, CTS converts int and integer into the int32 structure.

CLS
CLS stands for common language specification.
CLS is a subset of CTS and it declares all the rules and restrictions that all languages under .NET Framework must follow. The language which follows these rules is known as CLS compliant.
For example, we can use multiple inheritances in c++ but when we use the same code in C# it creates a problem because C# does not support multiple inheritances. Therefore, CLS restricts multiple inheritances for all language.

One other rule is that you cannot have a member with the same name and a different case. In C# add() and Add() are different because it is case sensitive but a problem arises when we use this code in VB .NET because it is not case-sensitive and it considers add() and Add() as the same.


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About HostForLIFE.eu

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