I often run into the problem of producing a javascript array on an ASP.net page from an IEnumerable and I was wondering if there was an easier or clearer way to do it than
<% bool firstItem = true;
foreach(var item in items){
if(firstItem)
{
firstItem = false;
}
else
{%>
,
<%}%>
'<%:item%>'
%>
The whole thing is made much more verbose because of IE's inability to handle a hanging comma in an array or object.
With a bit of help from System.Linq this becomes quite easy.
var array = [ <%=
string.Join(",", items.Select(v => "'" + v.ToString() + "'").ToArray())
%> ];
</script> character sequence. A good solution would guard against these possibilities.
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Use the JavaScriptSerializer from System.Web.Extensions
<%: new JavaScriptSerializer().Serialize(items) %>
You can use an anonymous class and DataContractJsonSerializer and do something like this:
var toSerialize = items.Select(x => new { JSProp = x.ItemProp }).ToList();
var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(toSerialize.GetType());
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
serializer.WriteObject(ms, myPerson);
string json = Encoding.Default.GetString(ms.ToArray());
I like this approach because you can create complex javascript types in a simply way.
Sorry if it does not compile but I'm not with a dev machine.
using clauses for the stream and the serializer.
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