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Serialization

Class Mapping

On this page

  • Overview
  • Automatic Class Mapping
  • Manually Creating A Class Map
  • Customize Class Serialization
  • Ignore Extra Elements
  • Mapping with Constructors
  • Customize Property Serialization
  • Support Extra Elements
  • Dynamically Serialize Properties
  • Additional Information
  • API Documentation

Overview

In this guide, you can learn how to customize the way the MongoDB .NET/C# Driver maps BSON documents to and from C# classes. You should read this page to learn more about the default class mapping behavior, or if you need to customize the way the driver serializes or deserializes your data.

Automatic Class Mapping

When you use a class, rather than a BsonDocument, to represent data in a MongoDB collection, the .NET/C# Driver automatically creates a class map that it uses to serialize or deserialize your data. It does this mapping by matching the name of the field in the document to the name of the property in the class.

Important

The type of the property in your class should match the type of the field in the document. The .NET/C# Driver instantiates a serializer based on the type of the property in your class. If the types don't match when the driver attempts to deserialize the data, the serializer throws an exception.

Manually Creating A Class Map

You can bypass the driver's automatic class mapping functionality, and manually define the class map by using the RegisterClassMap() method.

The following example defines a Person class:

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int Age { get; set; }
    public List<string> Hobbies {get; set;}
}

The following code demonstrates how to register the class map for the Person class:

BsonClassMap.RegisterClassMap<Person>(classMap =>
{
    classMap.MapMember(p => p.Name);
    classMap.MapMember(p => p.Age);
    classMap.MapMember(p => p.Hobbies);
});

Important

You must register a class map before it's needed in your code. We recommend registering class maps prior to initializing a connection with MongoDB.

You can also manually map a subset of class properties, while still allowing the driver to automatically map the remaining properties. To do this, register a class map and call the AutoMap() method before manually specifying your properties.

In the following code example, the AutoMap() method maps all properties of the Person class, then manually adjusts the mapping for the Hobbies field:

BsonClassMap.RegisterClassMap<Person>(classMap =>
{
    classMap.AutoMap();
    classMap.MapMember(p => p.Hobbies).SetElementName("favorite_hobbies");
});

Customize Class Serialization

You can customize how the driver serializes and deserializes documents at the class level by using attributes with the class or by calling methods while registering a class map.

Ignore Extra Elements

When a BSON document is deserialized to a C# class, the .NET/C# Driver looks at the name of each field in the document and tries to find a matching property name in the class. By default, if a field in the document doesn't have a match in the class, the driver throws an exception.

You can choose to ignore any elements that do not have a matching class property by using the BsonIgnoreExtraElements attribute. This prevents the driver from throwing an exception, and maps any other fields that have matching class properties.

The following example shows how to add a BsonIgnoreExtraElements attribute to a class.

[BsonIgnoreExtraElements]
public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int Age { get; set; }
    public List<string> Hobbies {get; set;}
}

You can also ignore any extra elements when registering a class map:

BsonClassMap.RegisterClassMap<Person>(classMap =>
{
     classMap.AutoMap();
     classMap.SetIgnoreExtraElements(true);
});

Mapping with Constructors

By default, the .NET/C# Driver can automatically map a class only if the class has a constructor with no arguments. If you want the driver to use a constructor that accepts one or more arguments, you can add the BsonConstructor attribute to the constructor. In this case, the driver examines the types to determine how to map the constructor arguments to class properties or fields.

When the driver creates a class map for the following Person class, it will use the constructor marked with the BsonConstructor attribute. The name argument will map to the Name property and the age argument will map to the Age property.

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int Age { get; set; }
    public List<string> Hobbies {get; set;}
    [BsonConstructor]
    public Person(string name, string age)
    {
        Name = name;
        Age = age;
    }
}

Tip

Multiple BsonConstructor attributes

If there is more than one constructor with the BsonConstructor attribute, the driver uses the constructor that has the most parameters with matching fields in the document.

You can also specify the constructor to use when registering your class map:

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int Age { get; set; }
    public List<string> Hobbies {get; set;}
    public Person(string name, string age)
    {
        Name = name;
        Age = age;
    }
}
BsonClassMap.RegisterClassMap<Person>(classMap =>
{
    classMap.AutoMap();
    classMap.MapCreator(p => new Person(p.Name, p.Age));
});

Customize Property Serialization

You can customize how the driver serializes a class property by adding attributes to the property. For more information about custom property serialization, see Custom Serialization.

Support Extra Elements

You can design your C# class to store any extra elements in your document that don't have matching class properties. To do this your class must have a BsonDocument type property to hold the extra elements.

The following code uses the BsonExtraElements attribute with the ExtraElements property to direct the driver to store extra elements:

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set;
    public int Age { get; set; }
    public List<string> Hobbies {get; set;}
    [BsonExtraElements]
    public BsonDocument ExtraElements {get; set;}
}

You can also support extra elements when initializing a class map as follows:

BsonClassMap.RegisterClassMap<Person>(classMap =>
{
    classMap.AutoMap();
    classMap.MapExtraElementsMember(p => p.ExtraElements);
});

Note

After the driver serializes a class with extra elements back to BSON, the extra elements may not be in the same order as they were in the original document.

Dynamically Serialize Properties

You can use a method to determine whether or not to serialize a property. For the driver to automatically use the method when serializing, you must prefix the method name with ShouldSerialize followed by the name of the property that the method applies to. When the driver sees a method with this naming convention, it uses that method to determine whether or not to serialize properties that have the provided property name.

The following example creates a method that only serializes the Age property if its value is not equal to 0. The driver does not serialize any properties whose values don't meet this requirement:

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int Age { get; set; }
    public List<string> Hobbies {get; set;}
    public bool ShouldSerializeAge()
    {
       return Age != 0;
    }
}

You can also specify the method while registering a class map:

BsonClassMap.RegisterClassMap<Employee>(classMap =>
{
    classMap.AutoMap();
    classMap.MapMember(p => c.Age).SetShouldSerializeMethod(
        obj => ((Person) obj).Age != 0
    );
});

Additional Information

For more information on using C# classes, see POCOs.

API Documentation

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Serialization