Newtonsoft JsonConvert.SerializeObject ignoring JsonProperty if name is uppercase

Question

I want to be able to use the CamelCasePropertyNameContractResolver but override it for specific property names. For this, I use the JsonProperty attribute. This works fine except when the name that I choose is fully uppercase. Any ideas what's wrong or how to get around it?

In the example below, Bar is serialized to "BAR" when I don't use the CamelCasePropertyNameContractResolver, but is serialized to "bar" when I do use the resolver. Foo and CamelCaseProperty are serialized correctly in both scenarios.

using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization;

namespace ConsoleTester
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var foo = new FooBar {CamelCaseProperty = "test", Foo = "test", Bar = "test" };
            var output = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(foo);
            // output "CamelCaseProperty", "fOO", "BAR"

            var output2 = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(foo, new JsonSerializerSettings { ContractResolver = new CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver() });
            // output "camelCaseProperty", "fOO", "bar"
        }
    }

    public class FooBar
    {
        public string CamelCaseProperty { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("fOO")]
        public string Foo { get; set; }
        [JsonProperty("BAR")]
        public string Bar { get; set; }
    }
}

Answer 1

The reason you are seeing this is that CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver is intentionally designed to override the casing of dictionary keys and explicitly set property names , as can be see from the reference source :

public CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver()
{
    NamingStrategy = new CamelCaseNamingStrategy
    {
        ProcessDictionaryKeys = true,
        OverrideSpecifiedNames = true
    };
}

If you don't want that, you have several options to prevent casing of explicit names without creating your own custom contract resolver type.

Firstly , you could serialize using a DefaultContractResolver with NamingStrategy = new CamelCaseNamingStrategy() :

var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings 
{ 
    ContractResolver = new DefaultContractResolver { NamingStrategy = new CamelCaseNamingStrategy() }
};
var output2 = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(foo, settings);

This leaves CamelCaseNamingStrategy.OverrideSpecifiedNames at its default value of false .

Secondly , if you don't have access to the contract resolver of your framework, you could set JsonPropertyAttribute.NamingStrategyType = typeof(DefaultNamingStrategy) on specific properties, like so:

public class FooBar
{
    public string CamelCaseProperty { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("fOO")]
    public string Foo { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("BAR", NamingStrategyType = typeof(DefaultNamingStrategy))]
    public string Bar { get; set; }
}

Thirdly , if you want your entire object to ignore the naming strategy of the current contract resolver, you can apply [JsonObject(NamingStrategyType = typeof(TNamingStrategy))] to your object:

[JsonObject(NamingStrategyType = typeof(CamelCaseNamingStrategy))]
public class FooBar
{
    public string CamelCaseProperty { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("fOO")]
    public string Foo { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("BAR")]
    public string Bar { get; set; }
}

Notes:

• While it is also possible to modify the NamingStrategy of an instance of CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver , since the latter shares contract information globally across all instances of each type , this can lead to unexpected side-effects if your application tries to use multiple instances of CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver . No such problem exists with DefaultContractResolver , so it is safer to use when any customization of casing logic is required.

• When using or subclassing DefaultContractResolver , you may want to cache the contract resolver for best performance, since it does not share contract information globally across all instances of each type.

• I don't know why Json.NET's camel case resolver is designed to override specified names, it may be for historical reasons.

• Naming strategies were first introduced in Json.NET 9.0.1 so this answer works only for that version and later.

Answer 2

JsonProperty Attribute is not honoured when you use a ContractResolver.

What you can do to solve this issue is override the ContractResolver:

public class MyResolver : CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver
{
    protected override JsonProperty CreateProperty(MemberInfo member, MemberSerialization memberSerialization)
    {
        var property = base.CreateProperty(member, memberSerialization);
        if(member.GetCustomAttribute<JsonPropertyAttribute>() is JsonPropertyAttribute jsonProperty)
        {
            property.PropertyName = jsonProperty.PropertyName;
        }

        return property;
    }
}

And use your Resolver:

var output2 = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(foo, new JsonSerializerSettings { ContractResolver = new MyResolver() });