SerializeThis is a Visual Studio Extension. It lets you generate an example JSON for a class by right-clicking a type name. This can be helpful to generate example JSON to use in unit tests or through a REST client such as Insomnia.
This is not meant as a replacement for documentation and client generators such as Swagger.
It currently looks like this:
The serialized model looks like this:
The extension creates a temp file, writes the output there, opens the file in Visual Studio and then attempts to delete the file.
Its basic functionality has been tested in various scenarios, but if you have a type it can't serialize, feel free to open an issue!
This project is a Visual Studio Extension, so you'll need to install the Visual Studio 2019 SDK in order to compile it. The startup project requres Visual Studio 2019 to open and build, but the extension will work in Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019.
Start debugging by running the CodeCaster.SerializeThis project, which starts an experimental instance of Visual Studio, where the extension will be loaded. You can then open any C# file, right-click a type name and see the "Serialize As" submenu.
The experimental instance has its own file history, so click "Continue without code" on the startup screen, click File -> Open -> File... and select the file you wish to test, for example the file JsonTestClasses.cs in the root of this repository. On later runs of the experimental instance, you can then click File -> Recent Files -> ...\JsonTestClasses.cs so you won't have to browse to it again.