Edit

How to customize property names and values with System.Text.Json

  • Article
  • 6 minutes to read

By default, property names and dictionary keys are unchanged in the JSON output, including case. Enum values are represented as numbers. In this article, you'll learn how to:

Note

The web default is camel case.

For other scenarios that require special handling of JSON property names and values, you can implement custom converters.

Customize individual property names

To set the name of individual properties, use the [JsonPropertyName] attribute.

Here's an example type to serialize and resulting JSON:

public class WeatherForecastWithPropertyNameAttribute
{
    public DateTimeOffset Date { get; set; }
    public int TemperatureCelsius { get; set; }
    public string? Summary { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("Wind")]
    public int WindSpeed { get; set; }
}

Public Class WeatherForecastWithPropertyNameAttribute
    Public Property [Date] As DateTimeOffset
    Public Property TemperatureCelsius As Integer
    Public Property Summary As String

    <JsonPropertyName("Wind")>
    Public Property WindSpeed As Integer

End Class

{
  "Date": "2019-08-01T00:00:00-07:00",
  "TemperatureCelsius": 25,
  "Summary": "Hot",
  "Wind": 35
}

The property name set by this attribute:

Use camel case for all JSON property names

To use camel case for all JSON property names, set JsonSerializerOptions.PropertyNamingPolicy to JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase, as shown in the following example:

var serializeOptions = new JsonSerializerOptions
{
    PropertyNamingPolicy = JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase,
    WriteIndented = true
};
jsonString = JsonSerializer.Serialize(weatherForecast, serializeOptions);

Dim serializeOptions As JsonSerializerOptions = New JsonSerializerOptions With {
    .PropertyNamingPolicy = JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase,
    .WriteIndented = True
}
jsonString = JsonSerializer.Serialize(weatherForecast, serializeOptions)

Here's an example class to serialize and JSON output:

public class WeatherForecastWithPropertyNameAttribute
{
    public DateTimeOffset Date { get; set; }
    public int TemperatureCelsius { get; set; }
    public string? Summary { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("Wind")]
    public int WindSpeed { get; set; }
}

Public Class WeatherForecastWithPropertyNameAttribute
    Public Property [Date] As DateTimeOffset
    Public Property TemperatureCelsius As Integer
    Public Property Summary As String

    <JsonPropertyName("Wind")>
    Public Property WindSpeed As Integer

End Class

{
  "date": "2019-08-01T00:00:00-07:00",
  "temperatureCelsius": 25,
  "summary": "Hot",
  "Wind": 35
}

The camel case property naming policy:

  • Applies to serialization and deserialization.
  • Is overridden by [JsonPropertyName] attributes. This is why the JSON property name Wind in the example is not camel case.

Use a custom JSON property naming policy

To use a custom JSON property naming policy, create a class that derives from JsonNamingPolicy and override the ConvertName method, as shown in the following example:

using System.Text.Json;

namespace SystemTextJsonSamples
{
    public class UpperCaseNamingPolicy : JsonNamingPolicy
    {
        public override string ConvertName(string name) =>
            name.ToUpper();
    }
}

Imports System.Text.Json

Namespace SystemTextJsonSamples

    Public Class UpperCaseNamingPolicy
        Inherits JsonNamingPolicy

        Public Overrides Function ConvertName(name As String) As String
            Return name.ToUpper()
        End Function

    End Class

End Namespace

Then set the JsonSerializerOptions.PropertyNamingPolicy property to an instance of your naming policy class:

var options = new JsonSerializerOptions
{
    PropertyNamingPolicy = new UpperCaseNamingPolicy(),
    WriteIndented = true
};
jsonString = JsonSerializer.Serialize(weatherForecast, options);

Dim options As JsonSerializerOptions = New JsonSerializerOptions With {
    .PropertyNamingPolicy = New UpperCaseNamingPolicy,
    .WriteIndented = True
}
jsonString = JsonSerializer.Serialize(weatherForecast1, options)

Here's an example class to serialize and JSON output:

public class WeatherForecastWithPropertyNameAttribute
{
    public DateTimeOffset Date { get; set; }
    public int TemperatureCelsius { get; set; }
    public string? Summary { get; set; }
    [JsonPropertyName("Wind")]
    public int WindSpeed { get; set; }
}

Public Class WeatherForecastWithPropertyNameAttribute
    Public Property [Date] As DateTimeOffset
    Public Property TemperatureCelsius As Integer
    Public Property Summary As String

    <JsonPropertyName("Wind")>
    Public Property WindSpeed As Integer

End Class

{
  "DATE": "2019-08-01T00:00:00-07:00",
  "TEMPERATURECELSIUS": 25,
  "SUMMARY": "Hot",
  "Wind": 35
}

The JSON property naming policy:

  • Applies to serialization and deserialization.
  • Is overridden by [JsonPropertyName] attributes. This is why the JSON property name Wind in the example is not upper case.

Camel case dictionary keys

If a property of an object to be serialized is of type Dictionary<string,TValue>, the string keys can be converted to camel case. To do that, set DictionaryKeyPolicy to JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase, as shown in the following example:

var options = new JsonSerializerOptions
{
    DictionaryKeyPolicy = JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase,
    WriteIndented = true
};
jsonString = JsonSerializer.Serialize(weatherForecast, options);

Dim options As JsonSerializerOptions = New JsonSerializerOptions With {
    .DictionaryKeyPolicy = JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase,
    .WriteIndented = True
}
jsonString = JsonSerializer.Serialize(weatherForecast, options)

Serializing an object with a dictionary named TemperatureRanges that has key-value pairs "ColdMinTemp", 20 and "HotMinTemp", 40 would result in JSON output like the following example:

{
  "Date": "2019-08-01T00:00:00-07:00",
  "TemperatureCelsius": 25,
  "Summary": "Hot",
  "TemperatureRanges": {
    "coldMinTemp": 20,
    "hotMinTemp": 40
  }
}

The camel case naming policy for dictionary keys applies to serialization only. If you deserialize a dictionary, the keys will match the JSON file even if you specify JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase for the DictionaryKeyPolicy.

Enums as strings

By default, enums are serialized as numbers. To serialize enum names as strings, use the JsonStringEnumConverter.

For example, suppose you need to serialize the following class that has an enum:

public class WeatherForecastWithEnum
{
    public DateTimeOffset Date { get; set; }
    public int TemperatureCelsius { get; set; }
    public Summary? Summary { get; set; }
}

public enum Summary
{
    Cold, Cool, Warm, Hot
}

Public Class WeatherForecastWithEnum
    Public Property [Date] As DateTimeOffset
    Public Property TemperatureCelsius As Integer
    Public Property Summary As Summary
End Class

Public Enum Summary
    Cold
    Cool
    Warm
    Hot
End Enum

If the Summary is Hot, by default the serialized JSON has the numeric value 3:

{
  "Date": "2019-08-01T00:00:00-07:00",
  "TemperatureCelsius": 25,
  "Summary": 3
}

The following sample code serializes the enum names instead of the numeric values, and converts the names to camel case:

options = new JsonSerializerOptions
{
    WriteIndented = true,
    Converters =
    {
        new JsonStringEnumConverter(JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase)
    }
};
jsonString = JsonSerializer.Serialize(weatherForecast, options);

options = New JsonSerializerOptions With {
    .WriteIndented = True
}
options.Converters.Add(New JsonStringEnumConverter(JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase))
jsonString = JsonSerializer.Serialize(weatherForecast, options)

The resulting JSON looks like the following example:

{
  "Date": "2019-08-01T00:00:00-07:00",
  "TemperatureCelsius": 25,
  "Summary": "hot"
}

The built-in JsonStringEnumConverter can deserialize string values as well. It works without a specified naming policy or with the CamelCase naming policy. It doesn't support other naming policies, such as snake case. The following example shows deserialization using CamelCase:

options = new JsonSerializerOptions
{
    Converters =
    {
        new JsonStringEnumConverter(JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase)
    }
};
weatherForecast = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<WeatherForecastWithEnum>(jsonString, options)!;

options = New JsonSerializerOptions
options.Converters.Add(New JsonStringEnumConverter(JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase))
weatherForecast = JsonSerializer.Deserialize(Of WeatherForecastWithEnum)(jsonString, options)

For information about custom converter code that supports deserialization while using a snake case naming policy, see Support enum string value deserialization.

Configure the order of serialized properties

The [JsonPropertyOrder] attribute lets you specify the order of properties in the JSON output from serialization. The default value of the Order property is zero. Set Order to a positive number to position a property after those that have the default value. A negative Order positions a property before those that have the default value. Properties are written in order from the lowest Order value to the highest. Here's an example:

using System.Text.Json;
using System.Text.Json.Serialization;

namespace PropertyOrder
{
    public class WeatherForecast
    {
        [JsonPropertyOrder(-5)]
        public DateTime Date { get; set; }
        public int TemperatureC { get; set; }
        [JsonPropertyOrder(-2)]
        public int TemperatureF { get; set; }
        [JsonPropertyOrder(5)]
        public string? Summary { get; set; }
        [JsonPropertyOrder(2)]
        public int WindSpeed { get; set; }
    }

    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            var weatherForecast = new WeatherForecast
            {
                Date = DateTime.Parse("2019-08-01"),
                TemperatureC = 25,
                TemperatureF = 25,
                Summary = "Hot",
                WindSpeed = 10
            };

            var options = new JsonSerializerOptions { WriteIndented = true };
            string jsonString = JsonSerializer.Serialize(weatherForecast, options);
            Console.WriteLine(jsonString);
        }
    }
}
// output:
//{
//  "Date": "2019-08-01T00:00:00",
//  "TemperatureF": 25,
//  "TemperatureC": 25,
//  "WindSpeed": 10,
//  "Summary": "Hot"
//}

See also