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WCF Rest JSON Serialization

I am planning to use WCF rest JSON.  In past I have seen serialization issues it.  I read people using newtonsoft.json as default serializer

I see some explanation below of using it. I need some example where we I can use with newtonsoft.json . also want to handle throw back http errors to the client

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3118504/how-to-set-json-net-as-the-default-serializer-for-wcf-rest-service.


One more question Other have to host on windows service so going with WCF . I dont tjhink Web api is solution here??

Thanks
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Alexandre Simões
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WCF vs WebAPI really depends on what you want.

If you want to do a "simple" REST service then go with WebAPI, hand down. When I say "simple" is architectural simplicity, business wise there's no limitation.

If you want to have a more advanced implementation, supporting SOAP and REST endpoints, or realy put your hands on how the communication is done at a lower level, then WCF is the way to go.

From what I see on your tags, you want to implement a REST service so, in that case, go for WebAPI, it's all you need in terms of functionality and already serializes your responses to JSON without any problems.

Cheers,
Alex
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Member_2_7967608

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Hi Alex

Thanks for the comments. My consumer is AngularJS.

I want to host in IIS Web api or WCF Rest. Here are some more details

1. I have to host 2 methods. One for GET and other For Update.
2.  The GET method invoke 3 ext services to get the data and finally gets data.
3. One issue I had earlier is with the DataContract Serializer of WCF. I had to use Json.NET Serializer to handle null values and ignore.

So Web api would be better choice, right?
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Alexandre Simões
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I want to ignore Properties with Null to serialize to Json. I think the default Serializer does not let us do that.   Also If some properties we dont want to serialize and ignore we cant implement it.
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Thanks so much.

One last question,  in  Web Api I need to use some proxy URLs from the APP.config.

System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MyAppSetting"]

<appSettings>
    <add key="URL1" value="http://test2" />
    <add key="URL2" value="http://test2" />
  </appSettings>

1. Should I create a Static class and use those URLs.
   Since the Webapi is stateless. So for every call it will make configuration access.
   I am checking for any performance issues on service hits.

2. Or I can pass it in the Angularjs Request body these 2 URLs everytime.

3. Is there any other mechanism?
Hi mate,
what do you mean by proxy URLs?

What are you trying to achieve? Reverse proxy for the AngularJS ajax calls?
The Webapi will be calling to 2 external soap web services.  They have 2 address endpoints.

 So I need to have the soap endpoints  of the services because they change based on dev or test environment.

<I was trying to simplify this as URL in my message>
Let me know you need further clarification.
Oh, ok, got it now.

Yes, the best is to put that kind of config in the web.config file as appSettings as you did in your sample.
Then you can just add one config per environment and use XML transformations to add the correct values depending on the environment you're building to.

Another approach is to put that config in the server (host) configuration, as a server variable of something like that.
This is what I do when I want to promote packages throughout environments instead of packaging each all the environment configs in plain text inside (some I might not want the devs to know).
With this approach, instead of picking the config from the web-config you just pick it from the configuration on the server.
This is a lot less usual to find but definitely the way to go if you're serious about continuous delivery stuff :)

I guess I went a bit off track on you here, sorry :), but I think this second option is good information for you to keep in the back of your head for possible future usage.

Cheers mate!
Alex
Thank you Alex.

I have option to store  on web.config.

I guess my question was based on performance. Are the config values stored in IIS worker process for this app memory or they are initiated with Every request.
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