I am using the DbGeography-Type within a SinglePageApplication (with breeze and angular). Now when using the Data with the DbGeography-Type (readOnly) there is no problem.
As soon as I save an entity which has a property of DbGeography-Type I get the following error:
Error getting value from 'WellKnownValue' on 'System.Data.Entity.Spatial.DbGeography'
When the data is serialized to JSON (with newtonsoft JSON.NET or is it ODATA/WebAPI?), the DbGeography gets serialized correctly but the property "WellKownValue" is called "Geography". This is also reflected in the MSDN-Documentation:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.spatial.dbgeography.wellknownvalue(v=vs.110).aspx
[DataMemberAttribute(Name = "Geography")]
public DbGeographyWellKnownValue WellKnownValue { get; set; }
My entity looks like this (over the wire):
{
..
"Name" : "Test",
"Coordinate" : {
"$id" : "3",
"$type" : "System.Data.Entity.Spatial.DbGeography, EntityFramework",
"Geography" : {
"$id" : "4",
"$type" : "System.Data.Entity.Spatial.DbGeographyWellKnownValue, EntityFramework",
"CoordinateSystemId" : 4326,
"WellKnownText" : "POINT (8.73275400148029 47.5006958431132)"
}
}
}
I guess when it is deserialized at a later point, JSON.NET doesn't know that the Geography-Property of my object is acutally called WellKnownValue.
I am using the Newtonsoft.Json-Package version 7.0.1 and Microsoft.Data.OData version 5.6.4.
How can this problem be solved?
I found out (with .NET Reflector) that the DbGeography-Type can be instantiated by a default constructor (with no arguments) BUT this default constructor doesn't set some important private members (like _spatialProvider).
This results in a NullReferenceException when WellKnownValue-Getter is called during deserialization. So what I did is what many people before had to do (and I hoped didn't have to do) - I created a custom JsonConverter.
One speciality was, that I had to register it in BreezeWebApiConfig instead of the normal WebApiConfig:
public class MyBreezeConfig : Breeze.ContextProvider.BreezeConfig
{
protected override JsonSerializerSettings CreateJsonSerializerSettings()
{
JsonSerializerSettings result = base.CreateJsonSerializerSettings();
result.Converters.Add(new WebDbGeographyJsonConverter());
return result;
}
}
And the converter:
public class WebDbGeographyJsonConverter : JsonConverter {
public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType) {
return typeof(DbGeography).IsAssignableFrom(objectType);
}
public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader, Type objectType, object existingValue, JsonSerializer serializer) {
var jObj = JObject.Load(reader);
if (jObj != null) {
var geography = jObj["Geography"];
if (geography != null) {
var wktText = geography["WellKnownText"].Value<string>();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(wktText)) {
var coordSysId = geography["CoordinateSystemId"].Value<int?>() ?? DbGeography.DefaultCoordinateSystemId;
return DbGeography.FromText(wktText, coordSysId);
}
}
}
return null;
}
public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer, object value, JsonSerializer serializer) {
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
public override bool CanWrite {
get {
// use default implementation of Serialization
return false;
}
}
}