StringTypeEnumConverter.Newtonsoft 1.1.4

StringTypeEnumConverter

A more precise enum converter for Newtonsoft json.

When serializing and deserializing an Enum using Newtonsoft.Json, you may get the problem of knowing what was the specific enum type.<br> This may happen if your class declares a property of type Enum, instead of the specific enum.

The problem:

        public class TestClass
        {
            public Enum Enum1 { get; set; }
        }

The "Enum1" field is declared as Enum.<br>This allows it to be filled with any enum. If you try to fill it with StringComparison enum, using the value OrdinalIgnoreCase, the serialized output, will be:

        {"Enum1":5}

The result cannot be acceptable for common uses, because you actually don't know what enum was used. The serialization lost the information.

The solution:

This enum converter aims to solve this problem, by extending the out-of-the-box converter "StringEnumConverter", that writes the string value instead of its underlying type (int in this case).<br> The class we are extending only writes the string value of the enum:

        {"Enum1":"OrdinalIgnoreCase"}

StringTypeEnumConverter extends this concept, writing the string value along with the originating enum type name, in this way:

        {"Enum1":"StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase"}

When deserializing, it looks for the StringComparison enum type in a given array of assemblies, and returns that type.

For code and more info: https://github.com/jonnidip/StringTypeEnumConverter