Bug: Serialization of Attribute values

Question

Hi, I found a bug in ArcGIS Runtime for WPF version: 10.1.1.0 when using ToJson() to serialize a GraphicsLayer. It seems that attribute values are not serialized correctly as they lose their original datatype and are converted into strings. the error is in the following line jw.WriteProperty(pair.Key, (pair.Value != null) ? string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "{0}", new object[] { pair.Value }) : null); within public static void WriteAttributes(ArcGISJsonWriter jw, IDictionary attributes, bool onlyDirty, Dictionary dirtyList, List fields, string objectIdField) Because of the string.format() call the value of the attribute, whether it is a boolean, double or string, is converted into a string and then stored as key: "value" in the json, instead of (with a double) key: value This bug is pretty inconvenient for us as it affects our application and thus our users. Is this fixed in the latest release of ArcGIS Runtime ? Sadly enough we can't yet upgrade to VS2012 or VS2013 and are still using VS2010. Can you confirm the bug and perhaps give advise on how to proceed to get this fixed for our installation that would work on VS2010. Thanks!

SomeGISGuy · Answer

Yes it is required to set the Fields property to ensure proper type serialization, or the fallback will be strings.

BKuiper · Answer

It seems that setting the Fields collection on the FeatureSet object (by looping through the attributes and creating them) mitigates this issue.

BKuiper · Answer

It seems that the code in 10.2 is still broken if (fields == null) { jw.WriteProperty(pair.Key, (pair.Value != null) ? string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "{0}", new object[] { pair.Value }) : null); } in public static void WriteAttributes(ArcGISJsonWriter jw, IDictionary attributes, bool onlyDirty, Dictionary dirtyList, List fields, string objectIdField) of class ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.Tasks.Utils.JSON.ArcGISJsonWriter It should not use string.format to write the result as attributes are of dictionary type not and in this case, will lose its type definition.