James Newton-King
Dec 23 2014

Json.NET 6.0 Release 7 - LINQ to JSON Annotations

Annotations

This release of Json.NET adds annotations to LINQ to JSON. Annotations allow you to associate arbitrary objects with LINQ to JSON JObjects, JArrays and JValues.

Annotations aren’t part of the JSON specification; they aren’t read from JSON or written to JSON. Annotations are for use within an application.

JObject o = JObject.Parse(@"{
    'name': 'Bill G',
    'age': 58,
    'country': 'United States',
    'employer': 'Microsoft'
}");
 
o.AddAnnotation(new HashSet<string>());
o.PropertyChanged += (sender, args) => o.Annotation<HashSet<string>>().Add(args.PropertyName);
 
o["age"] = 59;
o["employer"] = "Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation";
 
 
HashSet<string> changedProperties = o.Annotation<HashSet<string>>();
// age
// employer

In this example we use annotations to track changes to a JObject. First a set of strings for is associated with a JObject using annotations. The PropertyChanged event is then used to add a property name to the set whenever its value is changed. The JObject’s changed properties are now easily accessible anywhere in your application from the JObject.

Changes

Here is a complete list of what has changed since Json.NET 6.0 Release 6.

  • New feature - Added Annotations to LINQ to JSON
  • New feature - Added DescendantsAndSelf method to JObject and JArray
  • New feature - Added AncestorsAndSelf method to JToken
  • New feature - Added support for tracking references in ISerializable objects
  • New feature - Added CurrentToken to JTokenReader
  • New feature - Added CurrentToken to JTokenWriter
  • New feature - Added WriteToken(JsonToken, object) to JsonWriter
  • Fix - Fixed deserializing null values onto JObject and JArray properties
  • Fix - Fixed error when extension data bag doesn't inherit from Dictionary<TKey, TValue>
  • Fix - Fixed deserializing complex values inside multi-dimensional arrays
  • Fix - Fixed serialization settings not being used when deserializing F# unions
  • Fix - Fixed MetadataTypeAttribute not being found on some platforms
  • Fix - Fixed line breaks in exception messages to use Environment.NewLine
  • Fix - Fixed deserializing certain XElements with comments
  • Fix - Fixed casting JValues with a negative value to a nullable SByte

Links

Json.NET GitHub Project

Json.NET 6.0 Release 7 Download - Json.NET source code and assemblies