ScriptIgnore in Linq-to-SQL

Question

I have a Linq-to-SQL entity that I will be serializing and returning as JSON over a webservice call.

There is one property on that entity that I would like not to be serialized. For this, there is generally the [ScriptIgnore] attribute, which works exactly the way I want if I manually add that to the designer.cs file.

Now, since the designer file is automatically generated, I would prefer not having to manually edit it, as any changes could easily be overwritten. My question is thus: is there any way to annotate the property so that it is excluded upon serialization, directly in the DBML editor?

If the answer is no; are there any solutions to this that are neater than manually setting the property to null before serializing it, or returning an anonymous type identical except for that one property? In MVC.NET, is there any way to pass parameters to the JSON() method to modify its behavior, perchance?

My apologies if this has been asked before - I'd expect it to be a common question, but I couldn't find anyone like it.

Answer 1

All the DBML generated classes are partial classes so that you can extend them in another file. The DBML designer will only alter classes in the Designer.cs file. Remove the property from the DBML designer and put it in a partial class in another file. You can then add whatever extra attributes you wish and the DBML designer will leave it alone. You will have to manually manage this property and update it to match any database changes but i think that is probably a price worth paying if it solves your problem.

Answer 2

I would advice you to create special DTO's for this matter. This allows you to have full control over the output, because even when you add another property using a partial class, the original property that you want to ignore will still be serialized.

Answer 3

If you will have no success with partial classes (which is probably the best way), then you can just serialize the date yourself. It is known that ASP.NET MVC use JavaScriptSerializer to serialize the data. The JavaScriptSerializer have simple and nice customization features like JavaScriptConverter and you can very easy convert the object in something less standard (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3226568/use-attr-tags-for-json/3228858#3228858 for example or all other topics).

To be the most conform to the standards you can define a class derived from JsonResult (for example like here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/758879/asp-net-mvc-returning-jsonp or http://dev.qsh.eu/Blogs/Dmitry-P/January-2010/ASP-NET-MVC-Tip--3.aspx) and save serialized data in context.HttpContext.Response directly with a Write method. Then you are absolutely free how you serialize the data to JSON.