RestSharp - using the Json.net serializer

On a recent project, it became apparent we had an issue when our date inputs started magically incrementing after a few saves by the user. We later found the culprit to be the serialization settings in the Rest Sharp C# library. The default RestSharp serializer was changing these DateTimes to adjust for UTC time against the server time, i.e. we would send '2-26-2014 : 4:49 PM' on the client and the RestSharp library would then translate this to '2-26-2014 9:49 PM" to adjust for UTC/GMT time. After several saves by the user you can probably guess what happens.

The fix for us ending up being avoiding the default RestSharp serializer and just reverting to use the Json.net serializer. You can do this by by overriding the request object's JsonSerializer property like so:

            var client = new RestClient("http://localhost:62104/");
            var request = new RestRequest("Product/card/margin", Method.POST);
            request.RequestFormat = DataFormat.Json;
            request.JsonSerializer = new RestSharpJsonNetSerializer();

You will of course need to define the custom Json.net serializer (shown below). The Rest Sharp team has provided this on their help page along with explanations about their move away from the Json.Net serializer.

https://github.com/restsharp/RestSharp/blob/master/readme.txt

You may lose some features of the RestSharp JsonSerializer, but if you are OK with that this approach should work great. Hopefully this helps someone else in the same boat!

            
using System.IO;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using RestSharp.Serializers;

namespace MySerializerNamespace
{

    /// 

    /// Default JSON serializer for request bodies
    /// Doesn't currently use the SerializeAs attribute, defers to Newtonsoft's attributes
    /// 
    public class RestSharpJsonNetSerializer : ISerializer
    {
        private readonly Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer _serializer;

        /// 

        /// Default serializer
        /// 
        public RestSharpJsonNetSerializer()
        {
            ContentType = "application/json";
            _serializer = new Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer
            {
                MissingMemberHandling = MissingMemberHandling.Ignore,
                NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Include,
                DefaultValueHandling = DefaultValueHandling.Include
            };
        }

        /// 

        /// Default serializer with overload for allowing custom Json.NET settings
        /// 
        public RestSharpJsonNetSerializer(Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer serializer)
        {
            ContentType = "application/json";
            _serializer = serializer;
        }

        /// 

        /// Serialize the object as JSON
        /// 
        /// Object to serialize
        /// JSON as String
        public string Serialize(object obj)
        {
            using (var stringWriter = new StringWriter())
            {
                using (var jsonTextWriter = new JsonTextWriter(stringWriter))
                {
                    jsonTextWriter.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
                    jsonTextWriter.QuoteChar = '"';

                    _serializer.Serialize(jsonTextWriter, obj);

                    var result = stringWriter.ToString();
                    return result;
                }
            }
        }

        /// 

        /// Unused for JSON Serialization
        /// 
        public string DateFormat { get; set; }
        /// 

        /// Unused for JSON Serialization
        /// 
        public string RootElement { get; set; }
        /// 

        /// Unused for JSON Serialization
        /// 
        public string Namespace { get; set; }
        /// 

        /// Content type for serialized content
        /// 
        public string ContentType { get; set; }
    }
}