Controlling JSON serialization in .Net Core Web API (Serialize enum values as strings, not integers)

.Net Core Web API uses Newtonsoft's Json.NET to do JSON serialization and for other cases where you wanted to control Json.NET options you would do something like

JsonConvert.DefaultSettings = (() =>
{
    var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings();
    // do something with settings
    return settings;
});

, but in this case it doesn't work. The way to do it is to use the fluent interface method and hook yourself in the ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) method, after the call to .AddMvc(), like this:

services
    .AddMvc()
    .AddJsonOptions(options =>
    {
        var settings=options.SerializerSettings;
        // do something with settings
    });

In my particular case I wanted to serialize enums as strings, not as integers. To do that, you need to use the StringEnumConverter class. For example if you wanted to serialize the Gender property of a person as a string you could have defined the entity like this:

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    [JsonConverter(typeof(StringEnumConverter))]
    public GenderEnum Gender { get; set; }
}

In order to do this globally, add the converter to the settings converter list:

services
    .AddMvc()
    .AddJsonOptions(options =>
    {
        options.SerializerSettings.Converters.Add(new StringEnumConverter {
            CamelCaseText = true
        });
    });

Note that in this case, I also instructed the converter to use camel case. The result of the serialization ends up as:

{"name":"James Carpenter","age":51,"gender":"male"}