Serialization and Deserialization

Overview

As part of release 0.9.13.0, Tweetinvi will partially support serialization and deserialization. I would like to express a special thanks to @tsconn23 for his help on the matter.

As this is an ongoing process, you can check the progress with the following issues: #75 Enabled Models to be Serializable

Tweetinvi JsonSerializer

Tweetinvi 1.1 contains a new static Tweetinvi.JsonSerializer static class. This class has been designed to simplify the serialization/deserialization of Tweetinvi objects.

Serialization

Serializing objects is very easy, you simply have to call the following method :

var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline();
var json = Tweetinvi.JsonSerializer.ToJson(tweets);

The .ToJson is an extension methods for any type of objects.

var json = tweets.ToJson();

Deserialization

To deserialiaze json into objects you can use the ConvertJsonTo method.

var tweetDTOs = Tweetinvi.JsonSerializer.ConvertJsonTo<ITweetDTO[]>(json);
var tweets = Tweet.GenerateTweetsFromDTO(tweetDTOs);

Again you can access this via the .ConvertJsonTo string extension method.

var tweetDTOs = json.ConvertJsonTo<ITweetDTO[]>();
var tweets = Tweet.GenerateTweetsFromDTO(tweetDTOs);

Custom

Tweetinvi comes with all the default classes. But you might want to be able to deserialize your own class or any class not supported by the serializer. To help people with this problem we added the .Map static method that give people the ability to specify how the serialization/deserialization should work for your class.

// This example shows that the serializer should use the `TweetDTO` property of `ITweet` to serialize.
Tweetinvi.JsonSerializer.Map<ITweet, ITweetDTO>(u => u.TweetDTO, Tweet.TweetFactory.GenerateTweetFromJson);

• u => u.TweetDTO informs Tweetinvi that it should should use the
• TweetDTO property of ITweet to serialize. Tweet.TweetFactory.GenerateTweetFromJson informs Tweetinvi that it should use GenerateTweetFromJson to create an ITweet from a DTO.

Using Newtonsoft

Serialization

The library currently supports IUserDTO and ITweetDTO serialization into json. To do so please use Newtonsoft.Json which you already need to use to run the Tweetinvi.

// Serialize an ITweetDTO
ITweet tweet = ...;
var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(tweet.TweetDTO);

// Serialize an IUserDTO
IUser user = ...; // or IAuthenticatedUser
var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(user.UserDTO);

Deserialization

Deserialization is also supported for IUserDTO and ITweetDTO. To use it you will have to use the JsonPropertiesConverterRepository converters.

// Deserialize as class `UserDTO`
var userDTO = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<UserDTO>(json, JsonPropertiesConverterRepository.Converters);

// Deserialize as an interface `ITweetDTO`
var tweetDTO = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ITweetDTO>(json, JsonPropertiesConverterRepository.Converters);

Note : JsonPropertiesConverterRepository is a static class containing all the converters required by Tweetinvi for the deserialization. Without specifying it, the deserialization will most probably throw an Exception.