Best approach to pass hash type data in string form from Rails/Ruby to a C# app?

Question

Hi,

I need to pass (via string content of a HTTP request/response body) name value pairs of data (like a hash) back from a Ruby on Rails server to a C# client.

Anyone happen to know offhand what would be the best format to do this in? Probably XML I would guess?

tks

PS. So overall the requirement is find a C# method that convert from a String of name/value pairs in JSON format (created by Ruby/Rails) to an existing C# standard name/value pair class/variable (e.g. Array or Dictionary I guess?)

Answer 1

Actually, JSON is supported in both, and would certainly do what you require.

Here are links to a Javascript Serializer for C#: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/401756/parsing-json-using-json-net

And as long as you require 'json' for Ruby on Rails, you can simply use the "[to_json]"[1] method.

Answer 2

You could to post that data as:

• HTTP POST fields (read it with Request.Form)
• HTTP POST field with XML (Request.Form, XmlDocument)
• HTTP POST field with JSON data (DataContractJsonSerializer)

EDIT: I have this samples:

// Building on Silverlight to send
using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
{
    new DataContractJsonSerializer(fileList.GetType()).WriteObject(ms, fileList);
    // send it
}

// Reading on ASHX page
JobEntry[] files = 
    new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Negocio.Cache.JobEntry[]>(
        new StreamReader(context.Request.InputStream).ReadToEnd());