How to pass json as object to ASP.NET MVC controller?

Question

I have an action

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Index(MyObject obj)
{
   return View(obj);
}

and an object:

 [JsonObject(MemberSerialization = MemberSerialization.OptIn)]
 public class MyObject
 {
    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "someString")]
    public String SomeString
    {
        get { return _someString; }
        set { _someString = value; }
    }

    [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "someDictionary")]
    public IDictionary SomeDictionary
    {
        get { return _someDictionary; }
        set { _someDictionary = value; }
    }

    public MyObject()
    {
    }

    private String _someString;
    private IDictionary _someDictionary;
  }

I want to pass this object to action by url. So I create url:

String url =  controller.Url.Action("Index", "SomeController");
url += "?obj=" + JsonConvert.SerializeObject(myObjectInstance);

It's create me an url with json, but when I use it - the object in url is null.

Can anybody help me?

Thanks!

UPDATED: Share instance of my MyObject as reaction to comments:

MyObject myObjectInstance = new MyObject ();
myObjectInstance.SomeString = "Hello";
myObjectInstance.SomeDictionary = new Dictionary<String, Object> 
{
   {"firstKey","value"}, 
   {"secondValue",5}
}

Answer 1

The modelbinder is capable of deserializing JSON. In other words, you don't need to do anything special. If you're request body consists of JSON (not a JSON string mind you, but an actual JSON object with a JSON mimetype), then as long as it can bind the data to the action parameter, it will. In other words, all you need to do is contruct one or more C# classes to represent the JSON object. For example, given a JSON object like:

{
    'foo': 'bar',
    'bar': 1
}

You'd need a class like:

public class MyClass
{
    public string Foo { get; set; }
    public int Bar { get; set; }
}

Then, this goes into your action signature:

public ActionResult MyAction(MyClass foo)

The modelbinder will new up an instance of MyClass and bind the JSON data onto the relevant properties.

Answer 2

Other than the fact that you should never engage in such atrocious behavior (you should only pass the object's ID in the link)... technically, you could do it this way:

public ActionResult Index(string myObjectJson)
{
     var myObject = Json.Deserialize<MyObject>(myObjectJson);