Deserializing object that inherits from ReactiveObject from Json does not work

Question

I am trying to deserialize some json into some simple objects that inherit from Reactive UI's ReactiveObject class. For some reason the properties will never get filled there. Using a POCO instead works without any problems.

class Program
{
    class Profile
    {
        public string Name { get; set; }
    }

    class ReactiveProfile : ReactiveObject
    {
        private string _name;

        public string Name
        {
            get => _name;
            set => this.RaiseAndSetIfChanged(ref _name, value);
        }
    }

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var profiles = new List<Profile>()
        {
            new Profile() {Name = "Foo"},
            new Profile() {Name = "Bar"}
        };

        var path = @"C:\temp\profiles.json";

        File.WriteAllText(path,
            JsonConvert.SerializeObject(profiles.ToArray(),
                Formatting.Indented,
                new StringEnumConverter()),
            Encoding.UTF8);

        // works
        var pocoProfiles = (Profile[])JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(
            File.ReadAllText(path, Encoding.UTF8),
            typeof(Profile[]));

        // properties not filled
        var reactiveProfiles = (ReactiveProfile[])JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(
            File.ReadAllText(path, Encoding.UTF8),
            typeof(ReactiveProfile[]));

        if (File.Exists(path))
        {
            File.Delete(path);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

To properly serialize ReactiveObjects you should use the DataContract attribute of the System.Runtime.Serialization namespace. Then mark the members you'd like to save with the DataMember attribute, and the ones you don't want to save with the IgnoreDataMember attribute.

So in your case, something like this:

[DataContract]
class ReactiveProfile : ReactiveObject
{
    [IgnoreDataMember]
    private string _name;

    [DataMember]
    public string Name
    {
        get => _name;
        set => this.RaiseAndSetIfChanged(ref _name, value);
    }
}

Here's one of Paul's old example usages on Github: link

And a documentation link for data persistence: link

I ran the code you provided with this change, and it works as expected. Let me know if you have any questions.