Here's the 2 class definitions in question:
public class GraphicModel
{
public string Title { get; set; }
public string Description { get; set; }
public string Byline { get; set; }
public string BylineTitleId { get; set; }
public string BylineTitleDescription { get; set; }
public string Category { get; set; }
public List<GraphicBinary> GraphicBinaries;
}
and:
public class GraphicBinary
{
public SubmittedImageType ImageType { get; set; }
public string OriginalFilename { get; set; }
public string ItemId { get; set; }
public string RecordId { get; set; }
public int RecordSequenceNumber { get; set; }
}
I had set things up on the front end to post the following JSON:
{
"Title": "AP Poll Stay at Home Protest Approval",
"Description": "A new UChicago Divinity School/AP-NORC poll finds that two-thirds of Democrats and about half of Republicans disapprove of recent protests of stay at home orders.;",
"Byline": "F. Strauss",
"BylineTitleDescription": "STAFF",
"BylineTitleId": "STF",
"Category": "a",
"GraphicBinaries": [
{
"ImageType": "PrintGraphicAI",
"ItemId": "dd142b48fe7c4cc6bf9b42c9c9402e7d",
"RecordId": "dd142b48fe7c4cc6bf9b42c9c9402e7d",
"RecordSequenceNumber": 0,
"OriginalFilename": "ChicagoShootings.ai"
},
{
"ImageType": "PrintGraphicJPEG",
"ItemId": "ccce25ddc1cb45d898b09eb0d91fcecc",
"RecordId": "ccce25ddc1cb45d898b09eb0d91fcecc",
"RecordSequenceNumber": 0,
"OriginalFilename": "ChicagoShootings.jpg"
}
]
}
Here's the signature on my controller method:
[HttpPost]
public JsonResult Graphic(PhotoAction actionType, bool hid, GraphicSubmission graphicModel)
What was happening is the method was invoked properly but the GraphicBinaries field was always empty even though the JSON was correct.
I posted a question on Stack Overflow (greatest site on earth!) here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61880755/asp-net-controller-improperly-deserializing-nested-list-of-objects
The long and short of it is there's a difference between fields and properties in C# as noted here:
This is critical because only properties are serialized/deserialized and the GraphicBinaries field was a field not a property!
